GOOD CONFUSION

"Mist on the Lawn of Olana"
watercolor, by Gretchen Kelly

 I’ve come to see, as my 70-some years have passed, that confusion can be good for me – that I can get more gifts from it than problems. Perhaps that shouldn’t be  surprising, since the word “confuse” derives from the Latin word for “mingle together”, and aren’t all things in this world mingled together, in some way or other, and isn’t mingling usually a constructive activity? By growing in a confused way, all mingled together, grass blades sometimes make fine-looking lawns, and the stars in the sky show the beautiful confusion of togetherness and endlessness. Cars on roads mingle in a seemingly confused manner, and yet the ostensible chaos of the traffic – what we might call the resourceful confusion of it – usually produces a steady and smooth movement of vehicles. My days, too, so often seem composed of apparently haphazard things and thoughts, and yet from that confusion has come, and still comes, the blessings given by this good life. It’s a similar confusion, I guess, to that of oceans that bring beauty out of swirling waves and organisms, or of fields of wildflowers that show splendor in the midst of seeming disarray. It’s a lucky kind of confusion, and I’m lucky to usually be feeling it.