Knot

A tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness. Of life, that is, as according to old but knowing Mr Emerson, a character of E. M. Forster's, all life is a knot. 'But why should this make us unhappy?' Yes; why? Because we don't in youth realise this is so, and when we do we cannot at first accept it; acceptance comes only in maturer years, when it dawns on us our years of perplexion were useless, quite useless. For some, no, most of us are too consumed, like George, Mr Emerson's son, with asking Why rather than saying Yes. Some will always be so; though some may have begun with saying Yes before asking Why, and in their awakening will revert to again saying Yes and cease to bother with Why at all. Because, of course, the optimist's view or rule is to always say Yes, whereas the pessimist's rule is to always ask Why. And where a being in those two camps falls determines how much of Yes or Why they are. Then, naturally external influences: circumstances or experiences add to those inclinations, and perhaps modify the Yes or Why impulse, curb or promote it. A Yes, therefore, could be become a Why; a Why a Yes. Or it could, of course, tie us into further, albeit smaller, knots.
The mind, in my view, likes something to work on, and is never happier, even if the outward expression is one of perplexion or sorrow, when there's a knot to solve, though it only upon examination seems to grow all the tighter. Some of us are inclined, then, so I'm told, to get muddled, to which Mr Emerson, if such a situation was put to him, might say: “Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them.” And to which you might think, if this reply was to yourself directed: What an extraordinary speech! And not known, like Lucy Honeychurch, what to make of it, nor how to begin to apply it.
How exactly does one spread one's thoughts out in sunlight? Do they require a picnic blanket on which to spread themselves? And if so, does it matter to them the colour, the texture or the pattern of the material or the weight of it? Mine, I think, would prefer a thick tartan, with tasselled edges, which, while ruminating, I could twist round a finger, or plait or tie together. Or perhaps the concept of spreading thoughts in sunshine is more equivalent to pegging them to a washing line, where hopefully the sun will purify and a breeze will freshen. But how ever one does it, the meaning of all those thoughts you did not before understand afterwards should be clear. And if not? Well...
Mr Emerson is silent; pack them up again until another airing; until another knot, usually of your own making, needs unpicking. But don't, in the interim, Mr Emerson now chimes in, let it make you unhappy.

Picture credit: Knot, 1966, M.C. Escher (source: WikiArt).

Journal entry, July 2021. See A Room with a View, E.M. Forster.