“I’m quite sure that this was meant to happen to Christy Lochrie,” my friend, Peter, said over a cupa yesterday afternoon.
We’d agreed to catch a cup, catch up and make the world right over a cup of java yesterday. Most times, over the last 10 months (can you believe it’s been 10 months now?) I artfully dodged his what-are-you-up-to questions, especially in regard to the Record Searchlight.
But time has a way of healing and I’ve done plenty of that.
So I told Peter, as succinctly as possible, what I went through. Told him about workplace chaos, the new management learning curve, the angst that arose out of it all, the mob mentality, the personalities and the cluster f*** called sexual harassment that it all created.
“You’ve got the right attitude, I think,” Peter said to my comment that I can’t escape it, can’t burry it and that, always, it will be part of me now. And that what I do with it now is up to me.
“It’s your Scottish ancestry,” Peter said. “That’s why you won’t give up.”
Then Peter told me a story. A story about Robert the Bruce and a tenacious spider.
Bruce watched that spider while holed up in a cave and contemplating his military defeats.
The spider, too, faced defeat. Each time he tried to thread an inhospitable portion of his web, he lost footing and failed. But there was no brooding on the spider’s part. He simply tried again until, finally, his web was sewn.
From that tenacious spider, Bruce found his inspiration to fight some more and, eventually, to take his place as King of Scotland.
Inspiration from a tiny spider and his web. It does come from the strangest places. And, finally, I know how to tell my story. How could I have missed it?
-Christy
I’ll leave you with a stanza from Bernard Barton’s “Bruce and the Spider.”
Six times the gossamery thread
The wary spider threw;
In vain the filmy line was sped,
For powerless or untrue,
Each aim appeared, and back recoiled,
The patient insect, six times foiled,
And yet unconquered still;
And soon the Bruce, with eager eye,
Saw him prepare once more to try
His courage, strength, and skill.
Filed under: Books, Butterflies, Creativity, Object Lessons, conversation, poetry | Tagged: Bernard Barton, coffee, inspiration, Robert the Bruce, spiders, tenacity
