Stumped by Shoelaces

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Tying shoelaces has been a dreadful task ever since I can remember. The process of creating a knot would always bamboozle me and tie me up in a figurative bind. 

I initially assumed this was hard for everyone else too, but no one else in my elementary school seemed to have any hassles. 

It was a common sight those days to find me playing cricket at the middle school grounds with my shoelaces flailing all around. “Dude, tie your laces, you are going to trip!” my friends will scream. From time to time, I will kneel down, make an effort to fasten a knot, and it will stay in place for a few minutes, but then start to loosen, and eventually give in to what appeared to be its irresistible need to be unbound. Lacing up a new shoe with six pairs of eyelets was its own nightmarish endeavor that would visit me once every couple of years. 

Where I grew up in India, we answered our school exams on loose sheets of paper. At the end of the exam, each student would need to tie their papers together with a white twine. The knot had to be strong or some of the papers might get orphaned from the main page that carried your name. At the end of every exam, after a number of failed attempts, I would sheepishly approach the supervising teacher to help me with the knot. Most were generous, but some would be annoyed, especially as this became a recurring issue even as I grew older.  

Growing up in a traditional household in an urban Indian city, there were knots abound all around. Hanging clothes lines on the terrace, setting up tents for family functions, packing or unpacking things, and even performing sacred religious functions seemed to involve the making and unmaking of knots. I felt like a fish out of water when asked to engage with anything that might involve knotting, and my clumsiness even became a source of comic relief among friends and family. 

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For unknown reasons, the basic technique of knotting continued to elude my mental grasp, even as I became a full-grown adult, husband, and father. It seemed to require a certain level of intimidating dexterity with my fingers, and created angst and exasperation. I saw knots more as pesky demons that tripped me up than the simple loops they actually were. 

My wedding involved tying a mangal sutra around my wife’s neck, and I was so terrified of failing the test on the big day that I had talked to my sister about covering for me just in case! 

After relocating to the United States, I transitioned to laceless slip-on shoes, never wore ties unless necessary, and figured out a way of life that minimized encounters with knots.

With the passage of time, the knotting nightmares gently receded into the past.

Until. 

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The memories flooded back in a torrent once the pandemic began and when I started playing cricket and basketball on a regular basis in the neighborhood playground. Every evening, every few minutes, right in the middle of the game, my laces on the high-ankle shoes (laceless not recommended for sports if you have weak ankles!) were getting undone. I would be constantly fiddling with the free-flowing laces and I would hear my teammates issue gentle warnings.  

It was deja vu. I was 10 again and could hear the echoes of the past.

The old faultlines with laces and knots were back, but I was many decades older, and the body and the mind had changed. This version of me was truly intrigued. It also made me indulge in a more fundamental seeking.

It struck me that I had never paused to reflect on the why. After-all, there is nothing complicated about making a knot or tying your shoelaces right. Was it a sense of shame or inadequacy that I never fully understood or articulated that became a mental block to learning? Or did I not give it the time or attention it deserved? Or did I have some weird structural deficiency —physical or mental—in relating to it?

I decided to run towards whatever this thing was and figure it out. I started understanding the basics of what keeps a knot in place, what can be done to make it more robust, how to deal with extra lengths of the rope or laces, how to double-knot to secure it, and how to untangle it with grace. I also started applying an extra bit of diligence every day to get it correct the first time. It was important to secure it well before starting the play. The more I got it right the first time, the less I had to tinker with it during a game.  

After a few weeks, I was good enough to make the knots withstand the stress of an entire evening of sports activities. But why was this so hard for so long? Why would such a simple activity be so hard to master? There was a bigger meta-lesson beneath the surface and it was staring at me in the face.  

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We begin to acquire physical and mental habits from a very young age— in things big and small— as we engage with life and interact with people. 

Habits are ways of thinking and doing that are repetitive. Many habits do help us get better. But several others involve subtle and subconscious conditioning —of thoughts or actions, or both— that become rigid and compulsive. Over time, the habits ossify and rarely do we stop or pause to understand this conditioning and seek to reprogram it. 

How often do we reflect on why we react in specific ways, or why we get anxious about certain people, activities, or situations? 

Our mental programming is akin to software code that executes on a set of triggers leading to errors in outputs. But what if we can debug and even edit the code? And what if we can do it in full awareness and be fully conscious of what we are changing it to and why?

Every feeling of inadequacy or discomfort —from the simplest to the most profound —is an opportunity to ask why, and drill down to the root cause. As humans living fast lives on goal-driven treadmills and programmed by societal interactions, we unconsciously build up layers upon layers of compulsive behavior that cause suffering. Shining a bright light on them may cause unease, or stir up unhappy memories, but also contains the potential to lead you to the exit ramp out of the muddle. 

Here is the good news: All humans are capable of becoming conscious of every unexamined thought, action, or behavior. And we have the ability to edit them as we deem fit, irrespective of the grime and moss it may have accumulated over time. 

If we are willing to enter “debug mode” and dig deeper, not just for the trivial, but also the weightier issues that burden our spirits, we can reveal, edit, and redefine ourselves. At a minimum, I can vouch that it will help you figure out how to tie your shoelaces!