Springer hunting for tennis ball:
Filosofical Friday
A couple of years ago when dashing with my minions through the airport, a book caught my eye:
Creating A Charmed Life; Sensible Spiritual Secrets Every Busy Woman Should Know. It's not usually my type of book , but this time I couldn't resist on the off chance that there was actually some secret to life that I've missed.
"The ability to coexist with the unresolved has immense practical value. Without it, we can function at our best only when everything is perfect (in other words, never). Even solvable problems seldom have instant answers. Until these problems are worked through,
we share space with them."
This is not to say that I think of patterns or yarn as problems - but they are unresolved things in my life.
"Dilemmas need fences to prevent them from migrating. Fencing in an obstacle means keeping it contained so it doesn't affect the rest of your life....When you have well-tended fences, one or two or a dozen things going wrong won't negate the 147 that are going right."
When it comes to my knitting, I envision a white rail fence on a farm with beautiful horses running behind it. I can enjoy looking at them even though I can ride only one at a time. There's no need to stress, or feel pressure about those that are waiting.
(Pardon the spelling - I'm practising (sic) wat (sic) my six year old is lerning (sic) in skool.(sic) )
A couple of years ago when dashing with my minions through the airport, a book caught my eye:
Creating A Charmed Life; Sensible Spiritual Secrets Every Busy Woman Should Know. It's not usually my type of book , but this time I couldn't resist on the off chance that there was actually some secret to life that I've missed.
Despite my initial skepticism, the book actually does have some good bits of wisdom. There are 
short chapters each centered around a thought about a different way to approach life. I read one a day when I can. After having read through it once, I would have to say my life is a little more charmed. Or more importantly, my eyes have been opened to all the ways it was charmed that I didn't recognize before.
short chapters each centered around a thought about a different way to approach life. I read one a day when I can. After having read through it once, I would have to say my life is a little more charmed. Or more importantly, my eyes have been opened to all the ways it was charmed that I didn't recognize before.Recently, as I worked through the book a second time, I came across a thought that has leaped out at me being both relevant to my knitting life as well as the rest of it. It's the concept of living with unsolved problems - or unknit patterns or unknit skeins of yarn.
"The ability to coexist with the unresolved has immense practical value. Without it, we can function at our best only when everything is perfect (in other words, never). Even solvable problems seldom have instant answers. Until these problems are worked through,
we share space with them." The author points to small things such as finding a problem with your bank statement on Friday night and having to live with it until the bank opens on Monday.. Or big problems like your best friend not speaking to you and refusing to take your phone calls.
This is not to say that I think of patterns or yarn as problems - but they are unresolved things in my life.
How do you deal with them? Fences, the author says. You build fences to separate them from the rest of your life.
"Dilemmas need fences to prevent them from migrating. Fencing in an obstacle means keeping it contained so it doesn't affect the rest of your life....When you have well-tended fences, one or two or a dozen things going wrong won't negate the 147 that are going right."
When it comes to my knitting, I envision a white rail fence on a farm with beautiful horses running behind it. I can enjoy looking at them even though I can ride only one at a time. There's no need to stress, or feel pressure about those that are waiting.
On a life note, it's a revelation to realize that I can mentally separate the issues. I've never been good at living with unresolved things. I'm a journalist - write it today and move on to the next thing. And now I have five unresolved problems (ie children) and a business filled with long-term projects, so it's more important than ever to be able to consciously set aside things I can't fix immediately to give my attention to what I can.
As a Christian, this is important because it means praying and then trusting that God is working on the things even when I can't. I'm okay with the praying part, it's the trusting part I'm not so good at.
The pics are from our recent snow day. It's since all turned to ice, but we had fun for awhile.
2 comments:
I really struggle with this and always feel like the unresolved or uncomplete is hanging over my head.. always there. I think I'm going to try and build a few fences.... :-)
Without a doubt, the biggest issue with having children for me is the unresolved stuff. Those things are ALWAYS there and just when you get one thing taken care another crops up, from simple things like laundry to larger issues like problems at school. Hats off to you for coming to a place where you can deal with them better.
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