Have you ever wondered why we love to arrange things so much? Why do we have this obsession with always cleaning, arranging things around the house, mowing the grass, sweeping the leaves, etc.?
Why do we love order?
Biologically we were built in such a way that we can only think complexly when we are not worried about our security.
It all starts with childhood habits, which are honed throughout life by personal experiences. Behind everything is the need to feel safe.
Some people do not feel the need to arrange everything perfectly, but others are frustrated just by the thought that at any moment something that is too close to the stove may catch fire, or that something may fall from the table that was not placed properly, and so on.
If the things in the house are scattered, then we tend to organize them so that we know that something does not fall at any moment and scare us or hit us. Only when we are sure that everything is in place and there is no danger, we can concentrate.
For example, if we live in a house:
- we mow the grass because we cannot live peacefully knowing that various animals can hide in the grass;
- we sweep the leaves because we don’t want to slip on them and we are afraid of what could hide underneath them (spiders, mice, and other bugs);
The exceptions
Of course, there are exceptions. But these are related to the culture, the lifestyle, the level of development, and the definition of order. What we call chaos, to someone may seem like order.
We can think of ourselves as perfectionists in matters of order, however, we may be surprised to see how orderly some people can be starting from some obsessions.
So, what seems chaos to us, in countries like India could be seen as order. There, either chaos is normal and people feel safe only in those conditions, or the definition of order differs from the one we have, and in their eyes, 3 sweaters thrown on the bed is not a big deal.
Order in nature
Probably those of you who live, or have lived in a house have wondered why the trees tend to grow so chaotically and why things are not as orderly as you would have liked.
In general, nature tends towards a kind of chaos. However, if we leave things as they are, and if we observe long enough, in all this chaos there are some rules that create some sort of order. Maybe not the order we expected and wanted, but things are not out of control.
This is the reason why when we find places in nature that man did not touch, we are often impressed by a different kind of beauty.
Conclusions
Each of us loves order, but the definition of order differs from person to person. Starting from the place where we were born and raised, from the aspects that caught our attention and the experiences that proved to us that a certain level of order is needed for safety, we built cleaning habits and arrangement obsessions starting from what we considered to be vital to survival and a good life.
