THERE is a soulful chaos in our world that rarely escapes our notice. It is an element of randomness that rules the smallest moments of our lives. Sometimes, it spills out of our very own lips in moments of anger or grief. It shapes life into something that cannot be predicted, even by our strangest dreams. For a millennium, we have attempted to overcome the unpredictability of life. We have treated the chaotic nature of life as an obstacle that must be fought against. Perhaps this is why we have failed to answer so many questions about the path to true peace.

As the newer generations begin to inherit the world, we have begun to notice something strange about them — they do not treat the chaos as something to be survived, but rather as something to be harnessed. Members of these generations seem to be more willing to disregard social frameworks and long-standing social conventions. In exchange, they have gained the ability to laugh more freely and walk with fewer burdens on their shoulders. They seem to have reached a tacit understanding that it is acceptable to compromise on some traditions and rules if it means that people can express themselves more freely.

The easiest way to observe this change is by comparing photographs of people in the past to those in the present. Have you ever noticed that in older paintings and pictures, people rarely ever smiled? The subjects of these portraits often wore expressions so serious that it was difficult to tell whether they were angry, upset, or simply posing for a picture. One of the main reasons behind this choice of expression was the belief that smiling, especially in something as important as a picture, was associated with someone who was either foolish or mad. It was considered much more respectable to pose for pictures and paintings in a solemn manner.

It may be true that the world now has a large collection of “respectable” photographs and paintings of people from the past, but unfortunately, we will never know what most of these people looked like when they smiled. As a result of a fleeting social norm, we may never see the light of humour dancing in our great-grandparents’ eyes. We may never receive a chance to see a kind smile on the faces of the great monarchs that we read about. We may never get to see the most beautiful version of many of our ancestors.

This may seem like a rather small loss in the grand collection of all the things we have lost to time. However, this loss is not something for which we can blame the passage of time. It is a loss that our own rigidity and false sense of importance have caused.

We spend our lives acting according to a set of rules that have been composed for the sole purpose of defying the chaos of the world. We teach ourselves to dress, walk and even speak in a specific, practised manner, not realising that when we have finished teaching ourselves these things, we would have also lost pieces of ourselves that make us uniquely beautiful. Then, when many years have passed, we wake up with the sudden realisation that we have never found true happiness or peace because we have been too busy trying to learn these rules.

The truth is, we cannot suppress all of the unpredictability of the universe using something as meaningless as formalities and etiquette. There are no timetables or flowcharts that are powerful enough to tell you for sure how your day will go. There are no rules of etiquette that can predict what someone will say when you interact with them. There are no dress codes that can tell you exactly how professional or dependable those around you are.

A sense of peace is not something that we can create or manufacture. Instead, it is something that arises when we are courageous enough to accept the reality of the world we are living in. Our world is filled with soulful chaos — some of which is good, and some of which is bad. Perhaps if we choose to embrace the positive chaos, we can create a world that is truly peaceful.