Orderliness may be the outstanding characteristic of the universe, but is the death of creativity. It’s also the death of accurate perception of the world around us, as we insist that it fit into the neat little boxes and straight lines we have created to contain it. Orderliness made me censor the title of this post. I really wanted it to be “Fuck Orderliness,” but I knew that would make a lot of people not look at it, and while it would also make some people look at it who otherwise wouldn’t, I surmised it would be a net loss. How messed up is that?

You see, we run around creating systems and packages that allow us to predict what will happen next, and it seems that no matter how many times our predictions are wrong we just keep forging ahead because the tension of living with the randomness of reality is too stressful for us to manage. Why? Simply because we don’t want to pay that much attention and would much prefer to run our lives on auto-pilot – and living on auto-pilot is a euphemism for not living at all.

Fuck orderliness. Spill things. Drop things. Use things for other than their intended purpose. Don’t try to force things into preconceived categories. Color outside the lines. Wear clothes that don’t “match,” which is nothing more than a subjective concept to keep you under control. Let loose. Scream in your front yard just as loud as you can, and when people come running tell them the sky is falling. Eat desert first. Intentionally do things “the wrong way.” Ask difficult questions that have no answer, and then demand an answer. When someone tells you that, “it’s simply not done,” take that as a cue to do it. Start living before you die.