How I Get From Tangled To Undone

Every time I feel like I’m all knotted up inside there’s one book I always seem to find myself going back to.

It’s not so much that it pulls me out of the knot, but it does show me what an untangled piece of string is supposed to look like.

I remember thinking about “The Sweater Song” a lot the first time I read it (which tells you something about how long it’s been in my life). All that complicated stitching is just a long piece of string. This is the book that unwinds me.

Here’s an example:

Those who think to win the worldBy doing something to it,I see them come to grief.For the world is a sacred object.Nothing is to be done to it.To do anything is to damage it.To seize it is to lose it.

I know, I know. It’s not for everyone. If it’s not for you, move on. But, if it is for you, or if you need something like this to remind you to untangle, unravel, or even re-spool, I’m here to say the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu works wonders.

It always reminds me there’s a fight I don’t have to be fighting, a stress I am choosing to stress over, a thought I am not accepting that I need to let go of, etc.

Pull that thread and walk away. Rivers Cuomo may not be Lao Tzu, but coming undone isn’t necessarily such a bad thing now is it?