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The Chains of Life
I have a necklace chain that I found in my pants pocket. It went through the wash, and now it's got a huge snarl in the middle. I'm trying to untangle it right now, and I just realized how much this chain represents people's problems in life.
Everything seems messed up at first. You can barely define where the knot begins and where it ends. If you want to be able to wear the chain, however, you're going to have to undo it sometime or it'll just sit there and get worse as time goes on.
At first you just pull on random snarls, hoping the chain will fall loose, but somehow it just makes the snarl worse. For every part that get loosened, two more grow too tight, so you can't pull at them anymore. Eventually you get frustrated and start yanking different parts of the chain, but you realize if you do that the chain will break, so you set it down and decide to come back to it later, when you're calmed down.
Sometimes you'll come back in a few minutes, sometimes a couple hours. Maybe you'll completely forget about it and find it again in a few days, maybe a week. But when you find it again you decide to start on fixing the problem again, except this time you do it rationally, slowly, so you don't end up tugging too hard on the other parts of the chain as you do so.
You look for the ends, and start from there. You pull one end through the snarls, and then the other, until the snarl grows smaller and smaller. With patience, you tug on one more chain, and the knot falls loose. The chain is no longer a problem for you, and now you can wear it without difficulty.
I've finished untangling the chain now, and I'm wearing it around my neck.
Somehow, just accomplishing something as simple as that makes a whole world of difference.
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