There are many ways to define your existence and all the moments that join together to create one full life.  Some people define life in increments of time.  For example, I know someone who thinks about it in terms of decades.  Others think in terms of age – childhood, teen years, adulthood, mid-life and old age.  I have always thought of life in terms of major life events – elementary school, high school, college, law school, marriage, and children.  The thing about all these different viewpoints is that they all focus on something major like time or an event.  It’s easy to see why that might be a common theme.  After all, it is simple to pick out a period of time or event and remember who you were then.  This allows you to connect your journey to something solid.

Recently I started to think differently about how to portray your journey through time.  I started to consider life as an article of fabric or better yet a tapestry.  The fabric is comprised of thousands of individual threads, some of which are different colors, some the same.  Some of those threads are tightly woven, some are more loosely woven and I imagine that there are some gaps or holes in the fabric as well.  Each thread represents not an event or a fragment of time but rather a moment.  Maybe not every moment of life, that would make the fabric miles and miles long.  But those moments that change you or impact you in some way.  These moments don’t have to be earth-shattering.  In fact, I have come to see that they can be simple and even fleeting.  Even so, those fleeting moments can definitely add a thread to the pattern of your life, leading you down a road that might have been otherwise unexpected.  And together with this one new thread comes a chain reaction, the substance and depth of which may impact the trajectory of your life in ways previously unimaginable.

Thinking about life in this way makes me treasure and examine each moment.  Well, truthfully I am probably not ever going to examine EVERY moment.  Some moments pass without any real significance.  I think of these moments as those that simply help identify the passage of time.   Even so, more often than not I think that moments in life, even those that seem to be insignificant, bring you somewhere new.  They create or leave behind a feeling, an emotion, a thought, a desire.  We might not necessarily be aware of the fruit of a moment like this but I have no doubt that each does impact the next moment and the ones that follow.  I think of it now as a string of junctures, each one influencing the next.  Even when we are not conscious of these junctures, they happen.  They exist.  They impact and motivate you and your future.  Leaving you with a rich tapestry that is your life.

Here’s an example of a single moment of my life that impacted me in countless ways.  About 4 years ago I broke my ankle while running.  This was a devastating thing for me.  I have been an obsessive runner for about 30 years.  I should say that I have been a one trick exercise pony for most of my adult life and haven’t really been interested in any other kind of workout.  Sadly, however, I obviously had to stop running for a while – a long while.  Once I was cleared to start some movement, a friend mentioned a cycling studio new in town.  She thought it was a fabulous workout and also a great group of people.  It took me quite a while to give up the dream of running any time soon and admit that my sanity required engaging in some other workout – immediately.  So, one morning on a whim I drove by and stopped in.  That same day I tried a cycling class and, as they say, the rest is history.  I have written before about this studio and how much it means to me.  I have found refuge in the people and the place.  It has been a source of love, comfort and support for me ever since.  I can say that I cannot imagine my life without this tribe.  The bottom line here is that this one suggestion from a friend and my one moment of veering off my path and onto a dastardly slab of black ice led me into a sisterhood of support that I cannot now imagine living without.  Needless to say, this thread has a wide berth and has woven many other threads into the tapestry of my life.  It has impacted the fabric of my life in countless ways and I could not be more grateful.

I think there are probably many more threads that will be woven into the fabric of my life.  Some I will expect and some I will not.  But whatever color they are or depth they bring to or embed into my tapestry, each one will bring a richness to my life that did not exist before that thread found its way into my fabric.  And I have come to find this pretty glorious.

Watch and listen to this:  “Glorious”  and just imagine the threads woven into her 100-year-old fabric. . . .