To understand how the process of life rolls, we must first explain the myth about the Fates that spin the tangle of our lives. And to be more accurate, the thread of the skein of life is different from life. The Fates (or Moirai) do not spin the events of our lives when we are born, they only prepare the thread of our lives. The word “spin” includes the preparation process of the thread that is put in the loom.

To understand it better, let’s see who the three Fates were.

There is Klotho that represents the present in the lives of people and is considered to be the oldest and the most important of the other two. It was believed that with her distaff, she spun the thread of every man’s life, his destiny, which followed him until his death. Next in line is Lachesis, who represents the future of people’s lives, because the end, according to nature, manifests itself in all things. She was defining the length of life of each person by measuring it with her stick. Finally, Atropos represents the past; what has passed is irreversible. She expresses the inevitable, the fatal, but also the unwilling and the dogmatic in the life of the people. She was the smallest sister and the most ruthless of the three, and she was cutting down the lives of people with her terrible scissors without hesitation, while Klotho was turning the thread of life, and Lachesis measured it.

I, being naïve, wonder: Why did Atropos, who was the youngest, represent the past… go figure!

Now, according to some weird ones that use the Ancient Greek language, if we follow the interpretation of the letters, we have the following: for the word ΓΝΕΘΩ (=spin): Genesis (= Γ) of a new man (= N) expressing the advent (=Ε) of the divinity (= Θ) coming from the universal space (=Ω). Altogether, ΓΝΕΘΩ (=I spin). It’s a risky interpretation, but I like it!

So the only thing Fates do is choosing the colors and decide the knitting. They do NOT sit on the loom to weave our lives. They prepare the thread, and right after that, they teach us to knit (cross stitch or loom, it does not matter). During the lessons, they let us get stabbed from the spindle. Of course, they are not only present at our birth but throughout our lives, since they can cut the thread whenever they wish.

Is it clear? We are the ones who are knitting our lives from the skein that the fates have chosen and prepared for us. Now, if we make a very tight waistcoat, it’s our own fault, and we are the only ones to blame.

Jokes aside, life is not about knitting, it’s much harder. It has to do not with a spur but with an anvil. In the fire of life’s every day, we forge rings that match and complete the chain that characterizes us. The only strange thing is that these rings are stuck together, and that adds to the chain of our lives a continuity and a direction. We always look to where the chain that we are forging turns. The chain can’t point to one direction and then suddenly change and point towards another. We need to make many intermediate links that will gradually correct the course concerning where we want to go.

One example is our decision regarding our studies. Link by link, we set the course. Let’s say I want to become a doctor. And as I get ready for the next link, I decide to change direction. In this case, I should start creating the appropriate links that I must add to the existing chain so that at some point later, I can reach the new destination.

The same goes for everything. Life is a chain. We build ring by ring with many intermediate links to be able to turn the chain if we wish. [I have embezzled the idea of the chain from an initiatory script that actually states: Every man’s action in his earthly life resembles a link in the chain of his worldly life. A sensitive link, that in every step reminds the individual of his act, or oblige him to perform a series of other actions that can consume and occupy the time of a lifetime].

What karma and which destiny are we, therefore, talking about? Karma means we are not in a position to change the continuity and not our immediate future. If you sleep in Athens in the evening, you can’t wake up in London, if you get into your car and drive to Thessaloniki, you can not get to Patra unless you change your course.

So we shouldn’t expect changes to happen in our lives unless we forge them, ring by ring.

Let’s have another look in the same process, because my dear friends, the same thing happens in bigger groups. If a country has built its own chain, it must follow the same way as well. In this case, though, we should also change the craftsmen who are preparing the rings. But to do so, proper training is required, education and culture that is.

I would like to mention some of the early craftsmen of human history and conclude with the actions of one of them. Many years ago, a link was created aiming to give the right direction to many small human chains. The name of the craftsman was Emmanouel, the son of Mary.

We move within this set of life’s processes and try in every way to escape and live differently. Nothing begins here; nothing ends here. But do we have any idea where the current link – if we look at the whole chain of life as a link – leads us? God bless you wherever you are!

PS. Life begins with the cut of the umbilical cord, and ends with the cut of life’s yarn!