How to Solve a Problem

~four silver chains in a knot~

My mother pulls them from her jewelry collection and says, This is impossible. Can you do it? Can you untangle these?

I know that I can, but I don’t know why I know.

I know that I will do something new because the task is impossible and the old way made the knots in the first place.

I sit at the top of the stairs and hold the ball of skinny chains.

I look at every aspect of the tangle.

The first thing to do is to see that it isn’t good or bad, it’s a tangle. It’s a neutral tangle. This thought surprises me, but it finds me the first pull and now the knot is different and it whispers, “ok.”

The first pull illuminates the many others to come and the knot becomes a network of small choices with big impact.

When I go, go too fast on a small pull, it slams and snags. And I see that my ego hits a wall and shatters into brittle shards.

So I breathe and return to service. What does the tangle want from me?

I become the four chains and there is no me or idea of I’m good at this or I’m bad at this or I can or I cannot.

There are simply fingers who become tangled chains. The more I breathe, the more the chains exhale and when a snag hits I know that my ego, my silly urgency, my inner authoritarian has come to “fix it.”

But there is no fixing. There is a chain and three others and a oneness made of innocence and curiosity.

And that is how I untangled four chains when I was 15.

I wake up this morning with this memory.

Why today?

I know that I can and this is why I know.