Each of Us Has a Purpose-Daily Meditation August 3, 2023

Today’s quotation:

Each of us has a purpose for living beyond our survival and pleasure.  Every individual is like a thread in a beautiful tapestry with a vital contribution to make, not only to the sustenance of life as we know it, but in the creation and development of more beneficial expressions of life.-John Marks Templeton
Worldwide Laws of Life

Today’s Meditation:

I really like the tapestry metaphor, the idea that all of us are a unique piece of thread that contributes to the overall quality of the more outstanding picture.  I may be just a blue thread in the river, but the entire picture lacks without those blue threads.  And I don’t have to feel the pressure of being the driving force behind the whole picture–I need to take care of who I am and what I’m doing, and my contribution will be just as significant as anyone else’s.

This metaphor shows us that our lives are interrelated and that none of us is in this alone.  Other people are contributing to life and our lives, and when we’re all working together towards common goals, the tapestry is beautiful, a wonderful thing to behold.  But when we say, “We don’t want any green threads here!,” we’re making sure that the picture is missing a shade that’s extremely important, and we’re preventing our image from having any trees or bushes in it at all (unless it’s an autumn picture, of course!).

We can apply the metaphor to our individual lives also by realizing that the tapestry we create is comprised of our relationships, the work that we do, the things that we make, the adventures and vacations that we take, the people we help, the books that we read, the music we listen to and the museums that we visit.  And if we ponder this concept for a few moments, we realize that nothing that we do is worthless or a waste of time, just as none of the threads in a tapestry is unnecessary–the world would be less without our presence; our own lives would be less without that mistake we made or that book we read.

We are constantly creating ourselves and our lives. The tapestry of our life will be a finished product that we’ll never actually see but that we can imagine very well when we keep in mind that all that we do matters; we can start to take each thing that we do more seriously and we can start to put more into it–and enjoy it more fully.

Questions to consider:

What does a tapestry look like with missing threads?  Why do we keep so many threads out of our own lives?

What would the perfect tapestry of your life look like?

Why do so many people reject the idea of unity and togetherness in favor of division and individuality?

For further thought:

We are one people forever woven together in a tapestry. . .  And it is our job, our duty, and our great challenge to fight the voices of division and to seek the salve of reconciliation.-Roy Barnes

If you missed our last Daily Meditation, it is here.