From our birth we construct a narrative for ourselves, and that’s the thread we follow from one day to the next. It’s spun from fibres of pain and hope and trouble and love and happiness, all twined together, many-coloured. Some people weave coir into the fabric of their lives, and others weave gold thread. They all combine to create something beautiful and unique: all the threads of humanity.
Often our thread gets hopelessly tangled, and the fingers of our minds and hearts fumble despairingly to untie it. We make connections with it between ourselves and the people we love; we bind them to us. There are times when our unkindness stretches the thread between us until it frays, or, drawn out to the thinness of a hair, it breaks, and with it our hearts. Others draw us in with threads long enough to let us wander with an illusion of freedom but strong enough to bring us to them with one twitch on the thread.
We lose the thread sometimes and find it hard to find again, forcing us to weave another that takes us along a new path. Or an unwanted, undreamed of thread, tough and burning as rope, suddenly and shockingly presents itself, forcing us to accept it in the weave and live with its painful reality.
I’ve followed threads of worry, ambition, love, fear and dreams, that have led to places where I’ve found sometimes resolution, sometimes pain. I’ve learned that the strongest thread is hope; it’s silky and elusive, often slipping through the fingers, but once in a strong grasp it draws us towards better days.
Pat Sutherland