A Lesson from Yarn in Hard Times

I heard something a couple of days ago that struck me as a great lesson for how to find and make beauty in hard times.

The woman who offered this piece of wisdom is a devoted crocheter. She and I and several other people are part of a Good Grief Network 10-Step group, discussing ways of accepting, dealing with, and acting through our distress about climate change.

That night we were talking about how we deal with uncertainty. The woman worked on her crocheting as the meeting progressed. At one point, she spoke of how she deals with uncertainty when it comes to deciding how to proceed with whatever it is she wants to make next.

If you can’t get the good yarn you want, she said, you don’t stop crocheting. You go to Walmart and buy the cheap yarn.

This struck me as a great lesson for any crisis or challenge in life. When the ways or the products or the services we rely on—and maybe think we can’t do without—are unavailable to us, how do we respond? Do we get grumpy and find someone to blame? Do we throw up our hands in despair and declare that we’re powerless to do anything at all? Do we weep over what we cannot get? Or do we look over the choices that are available to us, pick the ones we like the best—and make something beautiful of them?