I’ve been at yoga training for 8 days. Learning about the 8 limbs of yoga. Meditating and sharing. Finding webs + looking at them from different angles. Webs deep within me that I haven’t thought about for a long time. Intricate, tangled, beautifully spun fibers of being. Silk threads of soul.

It’s easy to fear webs and their itsy bitsy creators.

But we can also appreciate them. (Especially when we think of Charlotte with her salutations, spinning miracle webs of love and light to save Wilbur. Resilient and fierce, selfless.)

Whether we appreciate or fear them, we realize that our webs and the moments that led to their creation make us whole. Not always beautiful or perfect, just part of us. Part of our story.

I started doing a web reflection brainstorm two years ago. I create one whenever I need to feel centered or reevaluate where I am. (It also helps me evaluate whether my spending and saving aligns with who I really am and what I really care about in life.)

I’ve showed new friends on planes, my students, and the people I care about most how to make them. They’re a conversation starter, a spirit booster. Here’s how we make them:

• Draw a circle in the middle of a blank paper. Write: Web of (Name) in the middle of the circle and draw four lines jutting out of the circle towards each corner of the paper.
• Line 1: Top Twenty Life List. We list 20 things we want to do in our lifetime – no barriers. Close our eyes and dream. Why are we here? What are we going to do? What legacy are we going to leave? Where are we going to go? We list things we want to do to LIVE.
• Line 2: Top Twenty Loves. What do we love most about life? Things, places, people, ideas, feelings. What makes our hearts beat? We list 20 (or as many as we love)
• Line 3: Top 8 Strengths. We list 8 reasons we rock. What would our best friends say about us? What do we love most about ourselves?
• Line 4: Top 8 Core Values. What do we believe at our core? What are our top 8?

Our web is the blend of everything that matters most to us in life. It shows us that there is so much to live for in our world. That we are something and have something to share. 

——-

“Why did you do all this for me?’ he asked. ‘I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything for you.’

“You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die. A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.” – E.B. White Charlotte’s Web