Order or Chaos? A Personal Investigation of Muppet Theory

Over the past month, I've had more than one — hr-hrm — amorous dream about Bert or Ernie. The subconscious mind is a funny, funny thing.

After the second one of these dreams, starring Ernie, I posted about it on Facebook. Because I thought it was odd, interesting and funny and I enjoy posting odd, interesting and funny things on Facebook.

My post prompted my friend Todd (of 500 Kindnesses fame) to comment "You have an internal struggle between your inner chaos muppet and order muppet." I thought this was a pretty astute analysis, and was even more impressed when he backed his theory up with this Slate article: Are you a chaos muppet or an order muppet?

I don't think there is much doubt that my personality is dominated by chaos muppet characteristics. I like jokes (Ernie), cookies (Cookie Monster), music (Animal) and am a devoted feminist (Miss Piggy – or is she an order muppet? It's hard to tell, probably because she is both, as one of the few truly 3-dimensional muppet characters...).

If there were any doubt of my chaotic tendencies, one need only look at the way I live: 

My desk as I write this post – chaos abounds!

Yes, on the outside, chaos is definitely winning. However, I think Todd was quite right about the struggle between my INNER chaos and order muppets. It's not all so cut and dried.

I like orderly things, too. I relish sitting down to hours of digital typesetting – imposing order on messy documents — making columns of numbers line up or making translated sets of documents look comparable in very different writing systems, like Farsi, Arabic, Gujarati, Tamil, English. I love my desk work and can happily do it for hours. (Though I know being able to do it in my pyjamas is a big score for my chaos muppets).

Also on the orderly side, I long to de-clutter my life. Especially living in my tiny home this past summer, I saw how much unnecessary stuff is crowding my life. Paper, paper everywhere! Receipts to be recorded and filed for taxes, always done at the very last moment... I am getting tired of living eternally among lost and missing and unnecessary and unsorted things. I think my inner Bert is on the ascent. My Kermit, my Scooter, my Prairie Dawn.

I only hope that my chaos and order muppets will be able to find a sweet harmony — like Bert and Ernie at the end of this song: