While meeting a dear friend at the airport the other evening, she was talking about one of the on-board movies, "The Exotic Marigold Hotel", and the wonderful line 'it all works out in the end, and if it hasn't worked out, it's not the end.' That line has figured prominently in my reflections ever since.

There was a related line I heard about a year or so ago about endings. If you imagine a relationship as being a 'knot', lots of strands tied in together. Now all relationships change over time, and sometimes the knot becomes too constricting, or is tied in such a way that one of the people involved is restricted. Well, one can literally cut the knot, so that all the strands fall away. And sometimes that is the best route. And sometimes the better route is to untangle to knot strand by strand, letting some go, and finding new ways to tie the others. This latter way will give space to all concerned and perhaps mean new and healthier ways of being together.

I want to stress that there are times when the cut is vital for the health of all concerned. And at the same time, the patience, peace and gentleness required for the second option is in and of itself an extraordinary learning journey. In our world, at work and in our personal lives we are all too often expected to make quick endings, quick cuts, quick solutions, when a more patient untangling is actually what is needed. Such untangling requires a tremendous amount of courage, respect for self and for others, and the knowledge that it will not work out the way that one or other of the people involved may want. But in the words of the poets Jagger and Richards, 'you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need.'

As leaders we need to learn to be decisive. And we need to learn the patience to live into the knots in our lives, to sometimes take the time to untangle, to re-imagine, and to give each other the space to learn. And, “it all works out in the end, and if it hasn’t worked out, it’s not the end.”

May this week we each find a knot to untangle.