This afternoon I found myself thinking that the bronze beads in my new shower are a lot like life. If each major life event we encounter stands for one bronze bead, and each bead threads itself alongside the last hard formed, hard-earned bead, by the time we’re a certain age, we’ve created—within us—a chain of strength and endurance that helps us do anything.
The hardest part of life isn’t finding ourselves at the downward slope of a bead, but climbing up to create the next bead in our chain.