Bedlam

I am interested to see what word my finger falls on in the dictionary.  I always get a word the same way.  Shutting my eyes and turning the dictionary this way and that until I do not know if it is right way up, or upside down.  The last three times I have had to keep my finger at a word while I turned the dictionary up the right way to see what it is.  Today’s word is “bedlam”.
Bedlam has come to mean “a state of frenzied or wild confusion.”  Whenever I think of bedlam, my mind always goes to the Los Angeles riots.  Law and order had broken down and people were running amok.  Smashing things and looting.
Bedlam to me is not confined to that sort of thing.  Some places are bedlam.  Perhaps I am tasked with bringing order to a scene, and it can seem overwhelming.  I do not know where to start.  Yet I do like what I heard someone say yesterday.  “How do I eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.”  To me the point was not about consuming elephants but about tackling big tasks one bit at a time.
Some scenes are not bedlam while some are.  Many it seems involve bringing order out of chaos.  Some jobs seem to involve someone declaring I want to see this, and I want you to make it happen.  Sometimes it is replacing one order with another.  Sometimes it is creating order where there is none.
In all cases I know of bedlam is to be avoided.  It is a constant struggle.  It requires constant checking. (From where I stand it looks like many problems happen because no one is checking the checkers.)
One of my goals for our yard right now is to set and forget.  That to me is a worthwhile goal but I am realist enough to know that if I forget something the yard will take over.  I am constantly reminded of one of the laws of physis. “Anything left to itself tends to decay.”  I think of sites in Cambodia that have only been discovered though hacking away the growth that has taken over.
It seems to me that all mankind’s activities are an attempt to bring order out of chaos and where possible to take it further and build on the created order (like the Mars program)
Yet the order we create get undone so easily (like the great crash and what is being experienced right now with the cost of living worldwide and homelessness).
Bedlam to me is to be avoided and as someone said “if I knew the world was going to end tomorrow, I would plant a tree today.”  Yet I know I am kidding myself if I think the infinite can be controlled by the finite.
I reckon it is a good thing everyone does what they can.  For me, for bedlam to be avoided, the best place to start is to get rid of the bedlam in me.