7 billion people on Earth. 7 billion unique narratives. Our stories similar, but never identical.
Life works like fabric, the textile cleverly knit and woven. It is analogous to mortality, through which one’s subsistence is a singular thread that runs from one end to the other. Fibres sprawl outwards and away from you to form an intricate web of connections. A little world that revolves around you hatches.
The meshwork flourishes, the threads meander and coincide. Most threads cross path only for brief moments—strangers who pass by you. Some threads run parallel yours. They have crossed paths with many, and will continue to do so with millions more. But not with yours. Those are the close, would-be encounters. Celebrities or idols, prospective friends or partners. They are always in sight, but forever out of reach. They do exist, and are very real indeed.
Certain interactions, though, last longer. The constants in life. Some of them, good. Others, unavoidable and unwelcome. They are the stray, galling threads. Your adversaries. They hang loose like gnats but cling like leeches. They slither round and about, waiting on opportunities for skirmishes. Their actions, synonymous with their existence, are otiose. All these weaves and turns occasionally throw life off balance. A straight path, then a curveball. The changing of the seasons, the tides that rise and crash.
Seek for equilibrium amid the chaos, for loops of familiarity and intimacy manifest only when the right threads entwine. These threads are scarce and obscure, but staunch and secure once stitched down. These are people of essence; the centrepiece of your world. Your family, partners, and close friends. They run alongside you.
Through time, minor dissensions will chafe the fibres rugged and broken. Salvage these cuts and grazes with binding knots. A friction knot acts like a band aid—a temporary medical dressing that holds the skin together to facilitate healing. Most little fights, run-of-the-mill, heal. But keep them up and they can rupture into a lacerating, emotional turmoil. A knotted-end knot works divine here, just like hemostasis, whereby platelets scramble to clump and stopple an open wound.
A neck that is constricted, suffocates! The one who submerges, exacerbates the situation. The threads once adpressed cross the Rubicon as—perhaps a solace?—one. Alea iacta est. Eviscerate that portion of the fabric. Severe the connection. But once you nullify the pain and agony, a scar debouches.
The scar: a timely reminder of the familiarity and intimacy that once was.
Each fabric represents a little world, its iridescence lustrous by its own rights. Within each world, convergences and collisions form a multitude of narratives. Each life is as sporadic and intriguing to the next.
What was the story behind that scar again?
Further Reading
