Unclean progress

I was in a good place when I enjoyed detangling necklaces. Perhaps it’s because I didn’t bring any tangly necklaces with me into this phase, or perhaps it’s because I simply need to learn to detangle necklaces even when I’m not in a good place.

Detangling necklaces means blocking out thoughts of hopelessness to take on one strand at a time, extracting one knot from the other without thinking about what you’re thinking about, because to do that would be to take the first step away from a mindset of patience and full immersion.

They call that kind of thing metacognition, or a second stream of consciousness. I call it overthinking, and though I had once been proud of my ability to garner those thoughts to deepen my understanding of my state of being or my reaction to things, recently it’s only paralyzed me into inaction. As a result, the tangled necklaces of my life have sat there for far too long and have accumulated too many knots for me to even start on the first one.

I guess this is a phase where it’s just messy. Detangling necklaces, especially the ones that have been left tangled for a long time, takes about ten tries for every loosened knot. A Matisse masterpiece takes countless strokes before lines are erased and the essence of the piece is captured in minimal strokes. The product is clean, the process is messy. The second stream of consciousness will only push you forward if you allow it to merge with your patience and conscious methodology into muted mindfulness.