Imagine this scenario, you look down and see a loose thread dangling from the sleeve of a favorite sweater. Depending on your particular personality type you will do one of two things.
That’s when the internal battle begins.
Maybe you decide to try to resolve this situation simply with a gentle tug. Or maybe you will choose to leave it alone.
Then perhaps, without warning, you will decide to take that leap from your sweater unraveling to “life unraveling” because that is literally how it goes sometimes.
The threads that make up your day to day existence are there quietly holding it altogether. Sometimes, though, you might find yourself suddenly driving through that opening and right into a midlife crisis of sorts that you never really saw coming.
Thoughts begin to flood your mind. You’re drifting back to that memory of the scarf that you started knitting back in 1989. You realize that these unfinished projects have been there all along nagging at your psyche, like that thread that you find yourself focusing on now.
“One day I will…” is always sitting there in the recesses of your mind. This happens at those very unexpected occasions as you watch a friend completing a quilt that you never seemed to be able to even get started.
Then sometimes, we just can’t resist pulling on those loose threads? We find that the consequences are much bigger than we could have imagined but there we are at a crossroads. You’re either successful and able to move on or you’re in it up to your eyeballs as you search for the needle and thread that is impossible to locate, further complicating your next move.
Have you ever spontaneously decided it was time to clear out a closet that would never shut completely? Then you found that the can of paint you intended to use in your dining room a year ago was blocking that door. From there, you order a dining room set to match the new color of the walls. On and on this continues until you’ve checked off every aspect of this desire to make it right.
Adding to the victory, your closet now is adorned with an organizer that would make Martha Stewart weep with joy.
Perhaps, one small loose thread can be seen as making up just a part of the texture of our lives. Something to keep us humble, opening the suggestion that “ it’s not that important an issue to resolve anymore with the caveat …”now that we’re older”.
Perfection can be so overrated anyway.
I like the idea, on some of those effortless days, that I can decide to choose to fix the loose thread and simply move on from there. Other days, I might just tuck in that thread, often like projects that I choose to disregard hoping to quietly forget like where I put my glasses. And sometimes I just let the thread dangle. Exemplifying that a life with no loose threads is a life with no reminders that it's okay to embrace the imperfections.
Pat Larsen, lives, works and plays in Greene County, NY.
Her stories and ideas for columns often come from her readership, so feel free to email your thoughts to pelarsen5@aol.com
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