These wise words remind me to keep following the thread, keep walking the path.

“Everything Falls Away”

Sooner or later, everything falls away.
You, the work you’ve done, your successes,
large and small, your failures, too. Those
moments when you were light, alongside the times you became one with the night.
The friends, the people you loved
who loved you, those who might have wished you ill, none of this is forever. All of it is soon to go, or going, or long gone.

Everything falls away, except the thread
you’ve followed, unknowing, all along.
The thread that strings together all you’ve been and done,
the thread you didn’t know
you were tracking until,
toward the end,
you see that the thread is what stays
as everything else falls away.

Follow that thread as far as you can and
you’ll find that it does not end, but weaves into the unimaginable vastness of life.

Your life never was the solo turn
it seemed to be.
It was always part of the great weave of nature and humanity,
an immensity
we come to know only as we follow our own small threads
to the place where they merge
with the boundless whole.
Each of our threads runs its course, then joins in life together.
This magnificent tapestry –
this masterpiece in which we live forever.

~ Parker J. Palmer