I feel comfortable and collected in the chaotic times, although I do not ever wish to experience them.
In quiet times, peaceful times, and so on, when quiet and peaceful people appear to be going about their quiet and peaceful lives—although who can really judge that from the outside looking in, maybe they're just barely holding it together—I myself find it to be something of a struggle to hold it together. It's like sitting in a quiet clearing in the forest, staring up at the leaves and boughs, with a mad dose of tinnitus ripping through the sky. It's not like any kind of hyperactivity where I feel the urge to move on to something else, there's just an underlying disharmony. It's not often destructive, but there are times, there are times.
Contrast that: chaos is calming. For me, anyway. The adrenaline flows and the eyes focus and the world shrinks to the size that it needs to be to get the job done. It's as if all that distracting noise in the larger universe is masked by the commotion of the battle. I wonder if that's what it's like to be a boxer--are those punches coming in at a fraction of the speed that we see them from the audience?
The Virus is unnerving. The Stock Market is unnerving. The Uncertain Future of an engineering company that made its wings out of finance and wax before flying to close to the sun is unnerving.
Breathe more deeply.
I started reading the George Long translation of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius recently (Goodreads|review|notes), in part, I suppose to help deal with those moments of unpressing uncertainty, when things get crazy but there's really nothing to you can do to affect the situation—to be, as Jules exhorted Yolanda, like three little Fonzies. One line stands out from the end of Book 4:
Be like the promontory against which the waves continually break, but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.
Unhappy am I because this has happened to me.- Not so, but happy am I, though this has happened to me, because I continue free from pain, neither crushed by the present nor fearing the future. For such a thing as this might have happened to every man; but every man would not have continued free from pain on such an occasion. Why then is that rather a misfortune than this a good fortune? And dost thou in all cases call that a man's misfortune, which is not a deviation from man's nature? And does a thing seem to thee to be a deviation from man's nature, when it is not contrary to the will of man's nature? Well, thou knowest the will of nature. Will then this which has happened prevent thee from being just, magnanimous, temperate, prudent, secure against inconsiderate opinions and falsehood; will it prevent thee from having modesty, freedom, and everything else, by the presence of which man's nature obtains all that is its own? Remember too on every occasion which leads thee to vexation to apply this principle: not that this is a misfortune, but that to bear it nobly is good fortune.
Maybe a little less fancy, but a little more true to my taste, from Ed Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang:
"When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about."