166 – Order

Happy New Year – Wishing you the best in 2023

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I like walking on the beach. It is good for the mind, body, and soul – and refreshing on my feet.

Earlier today, I saw an article about people with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). I’ve known people like that. Although I’m not, I think everyone has OCD about something. This thought leads me to my idea for the day – order.

My first thoughts about order are ways to organize – alphabetical, numerical, chronological, statistical, characteristics, and sequential are a few. Toss in personal characteristics such as gender, age, height, weight, birthdays, and more. The number of ways to organize seems vast. Besides, what is order to some may be disorder to someone else.

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I think about libraries. Many books in one place – books coming and going – visitors removing books from their neat and rightful place on the shelf, but returning it who knows where. Librarians constantly work to maintain order while fighting the movement toward disorder. Maintaining order within our personal spaces is similar. Daily life moves things out of order and toward disorder. It takes energy to keep everything neat and organized. It may take a lot of time and energy to get a room orderly, but not much time for chaos to reign.

My science background directs me to entropy – the movement of a system toward disorder. In a living system, such as a plant, animal, and even bacteria, life is full of examples of moving toward disorder, so the organism uses energy to return to order. Maintaining a relatively constant body temperature within our body requires monitoring temperature and balancing heat production, removal, along with adjusting to keep heat within. For those who remember a past walk, yes – that’s homeostasis.

Life engages in a continuous battle of ordering, disordering, and reording to maintain an equilibrium for life. But it’s necessary at the level of cells and by the organism as a whole. That’s true for we humans – and also true for the crabs, oysters, fish, seaweed, algae, and all the other sea life.

I watch the waves thinking about order and disorder. Water washes ashore, only to return to the sea. Water in motion moves sand to deposit it on the beach, only to have water move back into the sea while taking sand with it. Then again, the moving water is energy, and waves dissipate kinetic energy.

Each year I visit, the beach seems slightly different than when I left it 10 months prior. More narrow in some places – wider in others. Then again, the beach is constantly changing.

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Several years ago, I observed dredging of the channel – the process of moving sand from the channel floor to the beach. A giant vacuum system took in sand and water, then pumped it through long pipes. Eventually, a large volume of sand and water poured onto the beach. Then, the water returned to the sea, but most of the sand stayed behind. Enough sand that a bulldozer eventually spread to widen the beach.

I chuckle thinking sand will eventually regather in the channel, only for dredging to return a few years later. I also realize hurricanes do move great amounts of sand – reshaping beaches – clearing and filling channels. Then humans spend energy and money to return some order.

I think about terms related to disorder, such as chaos, disarray, and entropy. Our personal lives involve a constant battle between order and disorder. Municipalities repair streets only to have those same streets deteriorate over time. Life activities with all living things. The dredging of waterways. Fighting a messy room. The battle between order and disorder is all around us.

The thought of the order-disorder cycle of events in our home makes me laugh. One of us believes the labels of spice containers should be facing out, but the other returns the spice to the shelves in whatever way – usually, the labels are not facing out for the next person. An important order for one person is not important to another.

I look out over the water that goes as far as the eye can see. So much water on our planetary home, yet my endless view is only a small fraction of our planet’s water. So much water that our planet is very blue from space – appearing as a floating blue and white marble with a backdrop of the blackness of space. All that water absorbs much of the sun’s heat to help control our planet’s temperature. Yes, an attempt to maintain order.

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I wonder about the ups and downs of life and how they are similar to order, disorder, and reorder. The order of traditions, direction, and structure; the disorder of doubt and the issues of the day; the reorder of personal growth and renewal. Perhaps this is a way to look at the weather.

Thinking of order and disorder reminds me of other connected antonyms: concrete-ambiguous, trust-doubt, equilibrium-disarray, methodical-undisciplined, and tidy-messy. I’m sure there are more, but these make sense to me.

A beach is a place of a lot of cycling between order and disorder. Then again, that is nature at work because the constant struggle between order and disorder is everywhere. Even with chaos in action, the beach offers a steadiness that I appreciate. No wonder I like walking on the beach. It’s good for the mind, body, and soul – and refreshing on my feet.

See what other bloggers have posted about Order

• Order (a poem)
• War on Entropy (a poem)
• Creative Clutter vs Neatness (an essay)
• Entropy and Life: An Idle Speculation (a science essay)
• Chaos Theory (a poem)
• Abstract Art: Chaos (artistic expression)

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