Can You See It?

Monday, November 21, 2022

Can you see how your life is like a string of pearls you have strung together one-by-one with each action you have taken? You brought in the mail. A pearl. You watched your child’s soccer game. Another pearl. You worked on a presentation. Pearl. You underwent surgery. One more pearl. And so your life goes, made up of all the pearls upon pearls you have strung together.
 
The thing about all those uniform pearls marching along, so regular in size, so steady, one after the other, no distinction made between undergoing surgery and fetching the mail…they almost make the next thing and the next thing and the next feel easy. Just one more pearl to add to the string, which is a useful thing to visualize in the event you are stalling out on a project or trying to get out of bed or moving to a new house or, for that matter, basically anything at all.
 
Thinking in terms of pearls takes away the overwhelm by keeping things small and same size. Keeping things small and same size keeps things moving. Keeping things moving means we aren’t stuck which is a very good thing because being stuck is such a terrible feeling and it also doesn’t make sense -- it just keeps us in the objectionable place, the place we don’t want to be. But stringing another pearl and another pearl and another pearl gets us through and past the hard thing and onto something else. It’s a way of softening to life, even if the next thing requires us to be quite forceful.
 
I don’t see a context in which the string of pearls metaphor couldn’t be applied. Take golf. Golfers use it as a way to visually separate their performance from one shot to the next. That’s important because golf is a big mind game (much like life); it doesn’t bode well to be mentally back on the 4^th hole, which you bogied, when you are setting up on the 5^th. It only bodes well to take the next shot clean. A new pearl.  
 
May you have much to savor this Thanksgiving,
 
E