Recently I was doing my spring cleaning. Part of it entails washing windows and curtains. I had some valences in my office that I had added some seashells to dangle along with the fabric. The shells were attached to the tab hangers by a thin filament thread. As I hand wash the curtains I thought that I did not need to remove the filament nor the shells.

As I should’ve realized if I thought ahead, the thread would get completely tangled. And it did. I tried many different ways to untangle but to no avail. I eventually had to cut all the threads and remove the shells. Actually, I now like the look better without the seashells.

As I was working through the knots I thought what a good analogy about life: we will encounter tangles and knots in our lives. Many times they come upon us unaware. Or they happen due to our lack of thought. There are many types of techniques to untangle knots as well as ways to handle difficult life situations. Regardless of how we do it, we must be patient as we work out our entanglements.

Sometimes we need to calmly lay the knot out and back track the way it was woven. Other times we need to walk away from the knot, take a break and come back later when we are refreshed. When I was younger and I encountered a knot, I would ask my mother to help me. She was very patient in pulling the threads apart and trying to see the pattern of the entanglement. Sometimes we would have to get a needle or something slender to push through the knot in order to help loosen it. At the last resort, we might have to just “cut out the bloomin’ threads” and start again.

When I have encountered difficulty, I can start panicking and thinking that my situation will never get better. I can feel the tightening of anxiety and the grip of hopelessness. I need to remember that if I calmly look at the problem, I may be able to backtrack to where things began. Or I could ask for help from someone more experienced with the situation. I might need a tool or technique to help me handle the problem. At other times, I may need to cut my losses and get rid of the problem so that I can go forward.

What about you? What are some knots in your life? Are they getting tighter? What can you do to loosen them? Need to back off? Retreat? Ask for assistance? Learn some strategies? Cut the tangle out?

The thing about knots- they can be quite lovely. We have a couple of how-to books on knot tying. Most of the knots are tied for some type of practical purpose- hauling, supporting or attaching, But sometimes the knots are purely decorative. While the monkey’s paws (picture above) was originally intended to be the weight at the end of a line so that it would be easier to toss, nowadays it is mostly decorative. I have seen them used as key chains, cuff links, drawer pulls, lamps, doorstops, bookends.

Perhaps instead of thinking of knots as a major problem, we should think of our knots as decorative challenges.