Ribbon and Blues

“A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.” – Napoleon Bonaparte

When Alexander the Great encountered the Gordian knot in 333 B.C., rather than untying the mass of tightly entangled ropes, the young king drew his sword.

“It makes no difference how they are loosed,” he declared, slicing the knot with a single stroke.

That’s often my style when I’m faced with tough problems—for better and usually for worse. But on Christmas Day I decided to give the Alexander technique a rest in exchange for a little patience.

My sister, auntie and I had gotten together for our holiday dinner where we ate, laughed, and tried to forget about Covid-19 for a little while.

After watching The Mousehole Cat, one of my favorite holiday movies—yeah, smartass, I cried, okay?—we returned to the kitchen for dessert, which included a stack of Italian Christmas cookies, wrapped in plastic and held together with a brightly colored ribbon.

Any other time, I would’ve grabbed the nearest sharp knife or scissors, chopped that ribbon in two, and dove head first into the cookie pile.

On Friday, however, I had a sudden and odd flashback to a previous holiday dinner where my auntie was on dessert patrol.

This memory suddenly popped into my head where, instead of samurai slicing her way through the ribbon like I would do, my auntie was slowly untying the damn thing.

At the time I thought, what the hell is wrong with this woman? Why is she torturing us like this? I want my cookies and I want them now, damn it.

“You never know when you’ll need a ribbon,” she said.

A child of the Depression, my auntie can’t abide waste and by applying a little bit of effort she was able to salvage the ribbon and still unwrap the goodies.

Good Ribbon

Now it was my turn. I really wanted to see if I could be as careful and as deliberate as my auntie.

It didn’t seem likely, given my notorious short-fuse, but I’m looking to improve myself and I thought this was worth the effort.

And so, I began…

Patience and anger have this tight relationship, where the lack of one quickly leads to an explosion of the other. And I was feeling it big time on Christmas.

The obnoxious knot was not coming undone. Whoever tied this thing must have been a sailor or a sadist because he sure as hell didn’t want us getting to those cookies.

As I felt the anger levels rising, I applied my shrink’s advice to detach and observe—that is, step out of myself and view my actions and thoughts like a scientist watching someone else.

I saw how my mind invariably reaches back through time to replay ugly incidents from the past as a way to rev up the rage. Anger is a drug just like heroin and it’s always looking for something to feed on.

I didn’t take the bait this time, though. I didn’t rip the ribbon to shreds and then suffer through the inevitable regret.

I just kept working and it got to a point where I honestly didn’t recognize myself. The guy looked like me, but he wasn't flipping out like I usually do.

Finally, I undid the knot, pulled aside the ribbon and liberated all those cookies.

It felt good to reach my goal without destroying something and, as result, the cookies tasted even better to me.

Sometimes it does make a difference how knots are loosed.

I know that I am by no means cured of my anger issues. In fact, I was getting quite impatient when I was trying to find illustrations for this post.

But as soon I told myself to let things go, I felt better and I found some cool images.

I may never become King of Macedonia, but as least I’ve got my cookies and a nice long ribbon.