We all have so much inner beauty in us and yet we rarely let it emerge. As we go through life, it gets submerged and hidden amongst layers and layers of life experiences.
Yet we all have so much to offer – both to ourselves and others. So often we just have to seek out and find the inner beauty which is there just below the surface.
Here is a delightful little story entitled “The Balls of Wool”, which makes this point about inner beauty.
You will never look at a ball of wool in the same way :-).
I wanted to knit myself a jumper, a jumper with a sunflower on it, and when I asked for some wool, my mother directed me to the old cloth bag under the stairs.
The cloth bag was an old patchwork thing, with a gathered string for its neck, and it was into this that over the years, mother put all the remains from jumpers, scarves, cardigans and gloves that she had knitted for herself and the family.
When I went to open the bag – what a mess! All the individual bits of wool had tangled themselves together into one huge knot.
‘It’s hopeless!’ I wailed to my mother. ‘All the wool is tangled up together. I can’t possibly knit a jumper with that. How could I even start to untangle it all?’
‘It’s easier than you think,’ said mother. ‘All you do is look for the easiest knot. When you undo that, the next one will be easier too. Just keep going, until all the wool in unravelled.
I did as my mother told me to and started to undo the first knot, and then the second knot and then the third. Sooner than I though, the wool started to loosen and different colours began to emerge.
First I worked on the red wool. Then I worked on the yellow wool. Then I worked on the green wool. Then I worked on the grey wool. Very soon, instead of one huge knot, I had a number of neat balls of wool in front of me.
‘You see,’ said my mother, smiling, ‘it’s easier than you think. Now you can start to knit your jumper.’
As I started to knit, the pattern began to form. A sunflower, big and yellow and shining.
‘Who would have thought,’ I said to my mother, ‘that such a beautiful sunflower was hiding in the old cloth bag of wool?’
‘But it was there all the time,’ my mother replied, ‘it was just that you didn’t know where to look.’
Isn’t it about time you allowed your own inner beauty to blossom?