Creative Chaos

Video Transcript

We’ve really lost our relationship with unpredictability. We know what the weather is going to be like. We know what the traffic is going to be like. We always think everything should be uniform, should be perfect. But I think order is something entirely man made to protect ourselves from what is unknown to us.

The unknown, the unpredictable, the random…I would project my own fears onto it. I had OCD my whole life and my OCD was sort of a type of order that was in my head. It feels like my mental disorder was order itself.

Everyone’s obsessions differ. What I thought was that I had HIV or I had Hepatitis C. Then I got it into my head that I’ve got this very special disease which can contaminate anything and infect anyone. I had to flush the toilet about eight times. When I ate food I had to bury the plates and the cutlery in the garden. I couldn’t really differentiate between reality and my delusions. My family became very worried about me. And my psychiatrist strongly recommended that I go to the psychiatric unit.

It wasn’t necessarily like ‘Girl Interrupted’ or ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest’. It’s just normal people struggling with mental disorders. They’re just victims of a chemical imbalance in their brains. I realized that I wasn’t alone in this. That there are a lot of normal people who are struggling with something. And some days it felt like all the sane people were inside the psychiatric unit and all the crazy people are actually running countries.

When I had OCD, I was really scared of chaos because I projected my worst fear onto the unknown. It feels that chaos has really saved me. It saved me from the order that existed in my head. When I’m surrounded by chaos I feel alive and I feel totally out of my comfort zone. It allows more beautiful things to happen.

This vibrant, benevolent force of opportunities.

Reality isn’t just an ordered state. It’s a lot more magical than you would think. For me, reality is imbued with divinity. I don’t have to make up fantasies about it. I don’t have to make it more epic. It’s a celebration of everything to its highest degree.

The aim shouldn’t be to be normal. Rather just to be healthy and comfortable in ourselves and comfortable with where we are planted and bloom there. I’m not sure where life is heading to next but I’m excited about it. I just want to be, and I just want to feel, and be present in whatever is happening right now. I would say I’m both feet in reality now.