What a Mess!

In the last few weeks I've heard a couple of quotes that, on their face, might not seem related but got me thinking about an aspect of life we tend to either ignore or reject. First, the quotes:

"Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absent-minded. Someone sober will worry about events going badly. Let the lover be." Rumi

"Stay hungry, stay foolish." Stewart Brand (Whole Earth Catalogue) as quoted by Steve Jobs.

These quotes made me think about how messy life is. Relationships are messy, politics are messy (I'll say!), and our internal workings are messy. Still we tend to believe that things should proceed in an orderly, predictable way. We think in an "if...then" way. "If he loved me, he would never hurt me;" "If I were a good person, I would be happy for my friend who just won the lottery;" "If this, then that." Sometimes we are correct in this calculus. Often we are not. Because people are messy....and disgraceful and crazy and absent-minded and hungry and foolish.