Spaghetti Chaos
Life is messy. I think we can all agree on that point. The extent of the mess and how it’s dealt with is unique for every one of us.
My mess comes mostly in the form of managing persistent, or chronic, pain. It’s something I’ve dealt with for a long time, yet I’m still learning how to manage it effectively. When I feel like I’m not doing well, it’s often because I’m comparing my progress to this idea that I have in my mind of what progress is supposed to look like.
The grief cycle reality
We’ve likely all been exposed to some form of the grief cycle at one point in our lives. Whether you’ve studied it, had a therapist explain it, or seen it on a television drama, you likely picture the blue image below. The Kübler-Ross Grief Cycle shows a sleekly curving line that guides us through each step of the cycle, as if someone were holding your hand. The image with the red ribbon is slightly more accurate to how I feel we actually experience progress through grief, trauma, loss, etc. It’s messy. It’s a nasty game of snakes and ladders and is incredibly dependent on what resources each person has at their disposal.
The term “Spaghetti Chaos” is what I use to describe the reality of what first appears to be a tidy set of processes used to achieve a desired outcome.
On paper, it’s so predictable and clean.
- Step 1: Denial, “check!”
- Step 2: Anger, “check!”
- Step 3: Bargaining, “in progress…”
In reality, it’s confusing and painful. Spaghetti Chaos can apply to anything from navigating a traumatic incident, to learning a new topic.
Chaos origins in wildfire
I thought up the term “Spaghetti Chaos” when I was working as a mapper on a wildfire infrared scanning team. We would use a helicopter to fly low over wildfires looking for leftover heat, or “hotspots”, that threatened to restart the wildfire. We were a team of three: the pilot (obviously), the infrared scanner, and the mapper. My job as the mapper was to record our flight paths and the location of each hotspot to plot on a map. At the end, we’d land the helicopter nearby to hand off our results to the waiting firefighters. The flight path was important because it showed the firefighters where we had scanned for heat. This gave them better confidence in our work (“uggh…you missed a spot!).
Often, we would plan our flight paths in advance for “optimal coverage” by mapping out a grid pattern to follow. Predictable and clean. When I would look at the data that I captured afterward, it was anything but.
“My goodness, it’s just spaghetti chaos! Look at our lines, they’re all over the map!”
The squiggles that appeared on the map afterwards made me realize that you can’t always predict how the day is going to unfold, regardless of how well you plan.
We would come across dense thickets that the infrared couldn’t penetrate so we had to come at them from different angles. Sometimes there would be powerlines in the way, or water bodies, or really friggin’ tall trees that threatened to take out our tail rotor (the back of the helicopter). There were even times when we simply had a nervous pilot that didn’t feel safe following our predetermined flight path.
Spaghetti Chaos is life. It’s the reality of how we deal with difficult things and how the universe unfolds itself around us.
It’s messy. And it’s beautiful.
Very well written. I associate very well with what you have posted.
I’m glad you could relate to my story Stéphanie. Thanks for reading.