A mess of barbed wire…
Life seems complicated at times, and we all get tangled up in the complexities. Some of the complexities are self imposed and many of the complexities are completely out of our control. I think that people come to the Okanagan for vacation to escape the complexities, reduce the complexities, or get some perspective on said complexities. Perhaps that is why selling features that say things like “easy load”, or “simplify”, or “low maintenance” or even “all inclusive” are very attractive.
There is no denying that there is not an easy fix to many aspects of life. Often a difficult conversation we have with someone opens the door to several more difficult conversations before there is reconciliation or resolution.
I think we all come to those moments in life when there seems to be such a large tangled mess, or things are so complex we don’t know where to begin, and we can even come to the place where we believe it may be impossible to untangle it all – it seems too big!
That reminds me of a story I heard (true story)…a man lived in a home that backed onto an undeveloped green space that had been farmland. It was a perfect place to walk his dog every morning. During his dog walks through the treed area he would pass by a large mass of tangled barbed wire. It was ugly and it looked unwieldy. Each time he and the dog walked by this mess he would think, “something needs to be done about that barbed wire, it’s a nuisance, unsightly and dangerous”. But to him it looked like an unmanageable task. Where would you start? It’s too much for me. Finally after walking the dog past this mess for some time, he had a plan. He decided that each time he took the dog for a walk he would take one piece of barbed wire from the mass back with him. It didn’t seem like much, but he could manage a piece each walk. After almost a year, the mass of barbed wire was gone!
There’s a good principle in that story – one piece at a time. That is how we need to approach the complexities and complicated lives we live.