I think life is both the process of creating a tangle of threads and the process of slowly untangling them.
We are not born with this tangle. It takes shape as we move through life. Threads form through our relationships — with our parents, our spouses, our children, our friends. More are added through our careers and our finances, through the gap between what we want to achieve and the reality we face, through the choices we made in the past, through our regrets and lingering attachments, and through the responsibilities that arrive with time.
The threads begin to cross↗
At first, each thread seems to exist on its own. But as time passes, they begin to intertwine.
A career decision affects our relationship with our family. A choice we make for our family shapes our career. Choosing to earn more affects how much time we have. And the choices we make about our time come back to affect our family and our health.
At some point we realize that what looked like a single problem — something we could simply solve and move on from — is connected to countless other threads.
Some threads never come loose↗
And yet I don’t think the purpose of life is to untangle every thread perfectly.
Some threads cannot be undone, no matter how hard we try. We cannot take back the choices we made. Some relationships may never return to what we wish they could be, however much effort we put into them. And there are responsibilities that emerge naturally as the years pass — ones we cannot simply walk away from.
What matters may not be learning how to untangle every thread, but learning which threads are worth untangling, and which ones we need to learn to live with.
The question changes with age↗
Our younger years are, in many ways, when we create the most threads. We build careers. We form relationships. We start families. We accumulate. We pursue our dreams and try to turn them into something real.
But as I grow older, I find myself asking a different question:
Why am I so deeply entangled in all of this?
And at some point it becomes less important to keep adding to a life, and more important to slowly loosen the threads that no longer need to be there.
Maybe life isn’t simply the process of untangling what we have created. Maybe it is the process of learning which threads we choose to create, which of the ones we have already made are worth working loose, and which ones we accept and carry with us.
A tangled life is not a failed life↗
And there is something interesting in this.
A life without any tangled threads is not necessarily a better life.
If we had no relationships, no responsibilities, no attachments, and no dreams, there would be nothing to become tangled in. Life might be much simpler. But it might also be too simple to have much depth.
Our lives become complicated precisely because there are so many things we value.
We become entangled because we love.
We become entangled because we take responsibility.
We become entangled because we dream.
We become entangled because we have made choices.
So a complicated life is not necessarily a life that has gone wrong.
Maybe the more important question is not “Why has my life become so complicated?” but rather:
Among all these tangled threads, which ones are truly worth holding on to?