With the web metaphor on my mind, today I thought of this quotation from Justice Sandra Day O’Connor differently than I have before:
We don’t accomplish anything in this world alone … and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one’s life and all the weavings of individual threads from one to another that creates something.
Here’s a reworking aimed at a law school faculty, with apologies to the Justice:
No faculty member creates a school’s reputation alone … and whatever reputation a school has is the result of the whole tapestry of the school’s history and all the weavings of individual threads from one member of the law school community to the other that creates a reputation.
-Bridget Crawford
In the Sci-Fi book “A Tangled Skein”, each successive reincarnation of Chronos must learn that time and the physical universe are but one tapestry with an infinate number of threads making up the whole picture. Destroy or displace one thread, no matter its place in the whole, affects the whole tapestry. We all weave our part and become part of a larger tapestry. Some threads are part of the theme, some are backround. All the threads have a place to hold for the tapestry to be lasting and not unravel. Chronos has a tough job, keeping all the threads woven into a picture. We, on the other hand, just weave our own threads and become part of the tapestry.