When the way is dark and the wind is cold,
Keep dancing.
When the air is thin and your chest hurts,
Keep dancing.
There will be nights filled with the sour stench of failure and disappointment.
There will be mornings darkened with dread and shame.
There will be silences as heavy as lead and longing as desolate as the vacuum of space.
Still, keep dancing.
Breathe in and breathe out.
Because change will come.
And your life is not just your own.
You matter to someone, though you may not know whom.
You make a difference in the scheme of things, though you may not know how.
This is not a matter of faith, it is physics.
What is, is all part of a whole.
And you are.
There is a reason Wise Ones heed the Spider.
Spider weaves the most intricate of patterns in a web where every strand is connected, lending flexible strength to the whole, strong enough to hold heavy drops of dew to sparkle in the sunrise.
Like our human connections, Spider silk is among the strongest and toughest materials in the natural world, as strong as steel and tougher than bulletproof Kevlar. And yet delicate enough to be pulled apart by a careless hand.
Of course it is, for she blends Love and Death to create it.
Poised on her web, Spider waits patiently for the careless Fool who thinks they can scratch Despair from their dancing card.
Despair, Loss and Death, like the three heads of hell’s fearful Cerberus, stand guard.
For we must dance. That is the price of admission. None of us gets through this life unscathed.
But get through, we can, if we keep dancing.
Follow Life’s lead and keep dancing.
One step at a time.
For we are made of the same stuff as Spider’s silk.
Tough, flexible, and enduring.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Collect your breaths like pearls on a rosary, hang them on Spider’s web like dew drops in the dark. Because the sun will rise and make them sparkle.
But only if you keep dancing.
