While they may never properly iron linen table napkins, children and adults alike gain much from cultivating the skills required to bring livable order to ordinary chaos. It is a balm to have that skill in one’s pocket, not because it exercises proto-dominance on an indifferent universe, but because it can also bring clarity and calm to one’s cluttered interior. It mirrors exactly what thinking effects. Yet why is it bestselling brilliance for psychologist Jordan Peterson to say “make your bed,' but not when your mother teaches you to do it?
This essay, and its references, reminded me a lot of Mary Catherine Bateson’s Peripheral Visions, which I’m also freshly reminded was one of the best books I’ve ever read.