32. ENTROPY

The problem in working from home is you never really leave work. Many people know this, and many people live this. When you have a brain that works, or doesn’t work, like mine, you spend a good bit of energy trying to figure out what you should be doing in your job that day. I envy the friends I know who have the ability to prioritize and accomplish without hardly even thinking about it. I pivot from task to task, even when I make a plan…even when I’ve taken my ADD meds…even when I have deadlines. I am just so dang easily distracted. 

People who do not struggle with attention issues will tell you to deal with things immediately as they arise. “Touch once” they will say, alluding to the concept of putting things away immediately or only touching a piece of paper once, so that you don’t have piles all over the place. Take care of things as they come up.

If I do that, I never really accomplish anything big. I HAVE to leave that pan on the counter, and that sock on the floor as I am walking by, because if I change my focus I will never get back to what I was attempting to do in the first place. If you wonder why I am sometimes able to take on big projects, it’s because I am willing to live with a mess. I lucked out… and I am quite serious about this… because I married a guy who will not only abide my messes, he celebrates what I accomplish amid them. 

The storm before the calm:
I hand dipped little beeswax candles to attach
to the bottled honey from the hives in our yard.

The end product.
We gave these to neighbors as Epiphany gifts this year.
It took some real elbow grease to get the drips of beeswax off my wood floors.

I remember the first time my scientist brother explained the law of entropy to me, in simplified language. It included words like disorder, work, heat, constraint… these all have scientific terms, but he used the kindergarten version so I could understand. He’s good to do that for me. It is one of his talents to make science understandable to a layman.

It sort of boiled down to the fact that the laws governing our sphere of being say that things, without constraint, will by nature move into a state of apparent disorder, and if we want to return them to a state of order we have to apply work (heat). At least that’s how my preschool level of thinking understands it. None of us humans particularly like this law.

I was thinking about it this morning, as I scanned the countertops in my kitchen. They had been picked up and polished just the other day, and now…YIKES! They are in desperate need a little “heat application”.

I set about picking up the random items that found a home on those countertops and got distracted by the bag of Annaheim peppers waiting to be roasted. The peppers are now all black skinned and steaming in their constrained space and the rest of the counters are a mess. Its OK. It all needs to be done at some time or another. I’ve left the kitchen to do my daily writing exercise. Out of sight…not out of mind.

As I sit here clicking away on my laptop computer I’m pondering the law of entropy. I wonder if it applies in Heaven? I wonder if it applies in other universes? Is entropy part of the divine gift of choice that God gave us when he decided we could have an earth and bodies and freedom to choose for ourselves? When I read in scripture of God’s space having perfect order, I instinctively imagine it having zero chaos, complete calm, and no frenetic energy buzzing around. I frankly have no proof of this. In fact, if I think deeper, I imagine lots of energy in God’s space. Lots of work going on there. If there is order, It’s because we choose order, and are comfortable working to keep it that way. (It makes my brain tired and I want to go find something to eat.)

For whatever reason, there is a law which causes our earthly existence to require work. We have to work, and wishing we didn’t just makes us unhappy. It’s the nature of life. Knowing that gives me a tiny measure of resignation, which is good, because my soul tends to be a bit rebellious. If I know my daily existence is founded upon the need to work, then I guess I’ll trudge on. 

It may not be my gift. It may frankly be one of my crosses to bear, this battle between order and disorder. But knowing it’s part of my life plan makes it somehow more bearable.

My brother's understanding of the law of entropy.

My understanding of the law of entropy.