Beautiful Chaos

You invite things to happen. You open the door. You inhale. And if you inhale the chaos, you give the chaos, the chaos gives back. - Dave Eggers

I look out my window to see an elephant on the highway. He stays in his lane, keeping up a brisk pace with the passing cars, busses and motorcycles; and although I don’t see it, I can imagine he stops at a red traffic light better than I do in Washington, DC. This is India.

A woman from the worst slums of Gujarat wakes up every morning at the crack of dawn to walk through heaps of garbage with a bag across her chest and back, collecting enough trash to sell to a recycling plant in order to feed her hungry children. She makes pennies on the dollar but works everyday, dawn until dusk, hurting her body because those pennies can mean the difference between life or death for her and her entire family. Thanks to SEWA, this woman now works a full-time job making notebooks for Goldman Sachs and Staples, from the same recycled paper that she used to collect. This is also India.

I was always taught that when presented with a problem; find a solution. I never realized that finding the solution is the easy part and that instead creating the roadmap towards implementing that solution is where the true difficultly lies. I always believed that anything can be solved with an innovative, accurate and well-measured solution; but is this really true? In our quest for a perfect solution to our problems, we overlook the necessary step of analyzing its pathways and thus are unaware to which trade-offs we may have to make. Kant wrote that we are most free at the exact moment we make a decision through our free will. Making a decision is the beginning of a path towards a defined end or “solution”; not the arrival at the solution itself. Now the question is, what does freedom have to do with this? Everything, I say.

We are all awarded different explicit freedoms depending on culture, religion, geography, socioeconomic constructions, and a great variety of other factors. However, I believe in two great equalizers: 1) that within our own minds we are free to think, to analyze, and to make our own value-based judgments 2) that within our hearts, we are free to love—to love ourselves, our family, our neighbors and even our enemies; a belief that Gandhi brought to life during his non-resistance movement.

Be not the destroyers of yourselves. Arise to your true being and then you will have nothing to fear. KRISHNA

If we are all indeed connected by the freedom of our mind’s ability to think, then naturally, we will have different dreams, desires and aspirations. Within economics, the belief that we are self-interested individuals intent on maximizing our own utility needs to be augmented by the very natural powers of love and our boundless ability to care. In failing to introduce such qualitative, but powerful aspects of humanity, we forgo a holistic view. For example, on its own, an economic theory cannot truly take into account a mother’s love and self-sacrifice for her children or a child’s self-sacrifice for his or her family’s happiness.

I tarry awhile from the turmoil and strife of the world. I will beautify and quicken thy life with love and with joy, for the light of the soul is Love. Where Love is, there is contentment and peace, and where there is contentment and peace, there am I, also, in their midst. KRISHNA.

India is a chaos that is impossible to logically comprehend; yet, it permeates your entire being. Such chaos, if challenged, will defeat you. Therefore, you must simply inhale the chaos and breathe it in deeply and thereby embrace the chaos in its entirety. I see sacred cows dressed in beautiful jewelry and adornments, abject poverty that is unparalleled in its brutality on the human body and psyche, ethereal colors displayed in all their vibrancy; a country where spirituality, culture and religion enmesh and become one.

India is a land full of unique events, stories and people-- a place where time lingers and changes at a whim depending on whomever has earned its attention for the day. The most important lesson that I’ve learned thus far is to keep my eyes wide open and be receptive to the unique stories that I have been given the opportunity to hear, learn from, and become a part of.

Breathe. The ability becomes fluid.

By Leah Wald