The Chaos Kid

Okay, students: today's assignment is to find four words which best encapsulate/summarize your outlook, experience, and level of emotional development. It's a fun and telling exercise, and I'd enjoy hearing what you come up with.

Choosing my own four words was relatively easy:

1. chaos |kay-oss|, noun: complete disorder and confusion; Physics behavior so unpredictable as to appear random, owing to great sensitivity to small changes in conditions.

2. contradiction |kon-tra-dick-shun|, noun: a combination of statements, ideas, or features of a situation that are opposed to one another

3. egocentric |ee-go-cen-trick|, adjective: centered in or arising from a person's own existence or perspective

4. melodramatic |mel-o-dra-mat-ic|, adjective: characteristic of melodrama, esp. in being exaggerated, sensationalized, or overemotional

Putting them in order of influence may be a bit harder, since they often change position relatively easily, depending on circumstances, and there are large areas of overlap and interaction.

Mild chaos rules my life. I am never completely sure of anything and there is so much going on at the same time, and on so many levels, that any sustained form of order is next to impossible.

Contradiction is an integral part of chaos and colors most of my life. I am, for example extremely insecure, bordering on needy, while at the same time utterly convinced that I have some special talent or ability which gives me authority to influence other people's thinking and outlook. I often sincerely frighten myself with my self-loathing while at the same time being utterly convinced that my view of the world is the way everyone should view the world.

My egocentrism, which is pretty tightly interwoven with my other three key words, is rather like the 800 pound gorilla in the room, dominating these blogs and almost everything I write. But I like to think that my apparent self-absorption really isn't so much a matter of my thinking I'm so special (which I am, of course, as are you) but simply because I am the only human being for whom I can speak with any degree of confidence. My assumption that you share many of my views is total egocentrism; however, I find validation in the fact that you're reading my words now.

Because I still, to a great extent, react to the world emotionally on a child's level, I've always been given to melodrama. It adds spice to my life, and I like to fool myself into thinking it allows me to avoid the tight little boxes into which most people learn--wrongly--that they must lock their feelings. I feel emotions deeply. And yet, ironically, no matter how intensely I feel emotion--no matter how very much I might long to really, really cry, or cheer, or dance...there is something within me that does not allow it, and no matter how turbulent my inner emotions, externally I stand like a pillar of salt, admiring those who are not so restricted.

And there you have it: the four words--chaos, contradiction, ego, and melodrama--that underlie almost everything this one writer...this one human being...does, or says, or writes. I do encourage you to take a moment to think of four words upon which your own life is built, and I, for one, would be delighted to hear them.

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