Fray or fringe worldview; you can choose

Recently I wrote a post about how to look at the edges of a carpet as a metaphor for life.

You know the bits of a carpet that aren’t neatly sewn up but rather hang there loosely at the edges?  Do you see those bits as fray – as messy, a nuisance and unorganized?

Or do you see them as fringe – as balance to the overall design, an aesthetic that’s a little wild and loose and uncontrolled?

Like life.

If you see see them as fray then perhaps you recognize yourself as someone who likes to tidy up the fray in your life, someone who:

• has different coloured highlights or post-its or colour coded events in your PDA
• gets excited about the new organizational apps for your IPhone
• gets relaxed by focusing on systems (organizing projects, your wardrobe, your big ideas)

All good stuff

except

when you focus too much on tidying the fray and don’t see the beauty in the fringe.

Here’s an example.  A good friend of mine is a coordinator for a community-based arts project.  She is wonderful at viewing life through both the fray AND the fringe.  She is uber organized (fray) AND big, insightful ideas come out of her brain at regular intervals (fringe).

Through combining her fray and fringe skills she recently found the project $38,000.  Yep, $38K in unclaimed grant money that folks had forgotten about.  It took her organizational skills to do it plus her out there, let’s consider this unconsidered possibility kind of thinking.

For those fed up with the fray here’s to a little more fringe in our worldviews.  What would your world look like through the fringe?