THE FABRIC OF LIFE

Life to me is a complex fabric made up of all the threads of experience collected during a whole lifetime. You begin life as a plain cloth made up of the many characteristics you inherited from your parents, pure, clean and unadulterated. As you go through life you begin to add threads derived from all the knowledge, experiences, encounters and influences you acquire along the way, resulting in a mosaic of exquisite complexity and specificity.

A cursory look at this mosaic will reveal an apparent accumulation of unrelated threads which appear to have been woven together in a random pattern with no regard to sequence or order. Many people will try to convince you that your life is merely the sum total of all your experiences piled up one on the other, like a layered cake, without any reason or meaning. I do not believe this is correct.

To me every single thread, as it weaves itself into the mosaic, affects and is affected by every other thread it encounters. Over its lifetime this is modified by, and it modifies the appearance and texture of the fabric, changing its color, appearance, feel and outlook, and as it does, so are we affected in our attitude, our expectation, our hopes and our desires. Indeed we become who we are and our behavior is determined by this.

Lea Yekutiel, in her essay wrote the following:

“The fabric of life with all the threads interacting together can be quite positive,

but if one thread negatively vibrates against another thread or is angry because

another thread is “in a better place” or “looks better”, the feelings are passed

through the whole cloth and is absorbed and experienced by all. When I realized

that life is like a fabric, I started wondering. What if the cloth’s role is to absorb

and experience the aspects of each thread? What if each part of it, individually,

has to be experienced in some way by the whole cloth? What aspects are we

sharing with our fellow threads in this cloth of life? Are we adding something

or taking something away? Can we offer each thread care and love and have

it move through the whole fabric, rather than competing or trying to be better

than our fellow threads?”

Jack Mattingly in his discussion of this topic, repeated a poem by Fr. Gregory Norbert, OSB, which eloquently expresses its impact on life:

“I want to say something to all of you who have become part of
the Fabric of My Life,
The color and texture which you have brought into my being,
Have become a song and I want to sing forever.
There is an energy in us which makes things happen,
When the paths of other persons touch ours,
And we have to be there and let it happen.
Our thing, our accomplishment won’t matter a great deal.
But the clarity and care with which we have loved others,
Will speak with vitality, of the great gift of life,
We have been for each other.”

In my own personal life, I have witnessed many instances where a random encounter has led indirectly, to significant life changing events for which I am truly grateful. Very often the effects appeared several years after the initial encounter and in ways that could not have been anticipated or predicted.

As I see it, the Fabric of our life is uniquely our own, to do as we wish. To abuse it without respect or regard and then suffer the consequences of pain, regret and eternal damnation. Or to nuture and support it, respect it and expand it and as a result enjoy the rewards that will inevitably come as you journey along on the road of life.

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Life is a network of invisible threads.
…..George Eliot

What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments,

but what is woven into the Lives of others.
……..Pericles

Life is not advancement, it is Growth.It does not move upwards,

but expands in all directions.
……..Russell G. Alexander

The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.
…. Okakura Kakuzo

The art of living lies not in eliminating but in growing with troubles.
…..Bernard M. Baruch

The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation.
….Corrie Ten Boom

You don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when.
You can decide how you're going to live now.
……Joan Baez

What is important in life is life, and not the result of life

.…..Wolfgang Von Goethe