The world is a ladder – there is always something lower and always something higher than you. We need cobwebs

My grandmother used to make kilims (a type of rug), using old tights. I remember her sitting focused for long hours in a small, oblong bedroom in Bronowice in Kraków. She was repairing the ones she could and she cut those that were broken into long, narrow strips, just like peeling an apple. Then she would wrap the straps around her finger and knit until she got circles the size of a plate. She sewed them together to form a huge kilim covering almost the entire wall of the bedroom.

My grandmother's name was Maria. When I was falling asleep, she would put chairs around the narrow coach so that I didn’t fall onto the floor and she would put a mug of warm milk and honey on the stool next to it. This was at a time when you didn't have to pay for a weekend mindfulness course.

Over twenty years after her death, I was with seven other women in a conference room from a large organisation, discussing a project about 'women’s empowerment’. We wanted to create a culture of sisterhood, bonds and power. After a few hours, we realised, contrary to our intentions, that we started to recreate a completely different order. We got stuck in a conversation about academias and universities, criteria and success factors, recommendations and achievements. "Girls, we need a cobweb, not a ladder!" shouted Maja Kuczmińska, one of the participants in the discussion.

A world like a ladder is hierarchical. Something is lower, something is higher. What is written on paper is more important than a cloth knitted by my grandmother, on which the paper would be lying. A person who holds a degree is more important than the one who does not have one. It's a functional and efficient world, the world of optimised processes and priority tasks, angular and fenced. Many of us spend long hours in this world every day. Stainless steel in a very fast lift. Intelligent alarm in a car. Closed gate in the estate. Curvy road in a concrete underground car park. Grey open-space. Company badge. PESEL (Polish Resident Identification Number), PIN, NIP (Tax Identification Number), ZUS (Social Insurance Institution), access code. I'm cold. And you?

In a ladder world, efficiency and performance are of value. Mega and giga. In a world like a ladder, you know exactly who you want to be in five or ten years. Each day you climb higher towards your goals.

The hierarchism of a ladder world is visible in conversations. Someone wins, someone loses. Somebody does well, somebody fails. The invisible counter is counting. Somebody shows that they're the most important. Just like in the old comedy sketch of ‘Piwnica pod Baranami’, in which, a guy enters the stage with a big black case. He stands in the middle, swinging the case and finally puts it on the ground on its shorter side. The case is a portable pulpit, which the man unfolds in front of him like an accordion. He rests his elbows on it and, finally, he's ready to speak. How many guys do we know like that? How many hours did we spend in meetings and gatherings that consisted of pulpit preaching to explain the world to us?

If I ask what feeds you, what serves you well, what relaxes you and gives you joy, I bet the answer will come from another world.

“Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens / Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens / Brown paper packages tied up with strings / These are a few of my favourite things".

The world in which, instead of climbing, we yarn: satin ribbons, orange rust, waxy beech leaves, large snowflakes slowly falling on the trail, delphiniums, lobelias, hydrangeas, a cup’s pattern, a reflection of traffic lights in a puddle, the scent of earth after rain. The cobweb means small things, seen close-up, which mysteriously open something important and sensitive before us. “I think that when philosophers talk in despair about the silence of being, it results from misunderstanding the speech of being, which does not address us as a whole, but through detailed, meaningful particles," writes Jolanta Brach-Czaina, a philosopher, in her book "Szczeliny istnienia" (Rifts of Existence).

In the cobweb world, every one of these infinitely thin threads, several dozen times thinner than a human hair, is equally important; every theme, every significant particle, every narrow strip made of old tights, every glass of warm milk put next to the narrow couch, every daily act of kindness and every little thing seen in close-up matters.

The conversations that we’re weaving are different to those held on the ladders. They are sprawling, flooding rivers with dozens of tributaries, discussions about novels, TV series, about what they said and what they meant, hour-long brainstorming sessions discussing whether to paint the bedroom in burgundy or in moss paint, discussions about divorce, mesotherapy, about what you saw at the bus stop, about the elections, about high-waisted jeans, about how to help a friend who cancelled plans for the second time, conversations in which every tenth word is meant to convey information and the rest is a sparkling, shining, spinning, exchange of energy, space for cordiality, kindness, laughter, relief from the world of PINs and presentations for the management board.

“What kind of nonsense are you talking about? What are you gossiping about? What are you jabbering about? What are you babbling about? What are you cackling about, you hens?”

Sitting on a ladder, they're looking at us in a stern manner. Seen with a cold eye, the cobweb world is funny, secondary, redundant. In the ladder world, it is hard to believe that the cobweb can bear fruit that is beautiful and important, and that the cobweb is beautiful and important in itself. This was the case of an artist, Rebecca Solnit wrote about her in the essay "Men Explain Things to Me". The artist found in the catalogue explains that she was supposedly inspired by two well-known artists, whereas she came "from the world of needlework, weaving and all practical acts of handicraft".

There are sad gentlemen and ladies, mostly gentlemen, who sit on rungs, shake their heads and say: “needlework? Have mercy”.

But, is it me sitting on one of those rungs? Do I sometimes catch myself giving icy stares, feeling ashamed that I prefer weaving to climbing, lowering down my voice not to "jabber" or "babble” too loudly?

The worst thing is to put the ladder against the wall and arduously climb it day after day for another person's sake.

But you don't behave that way, do you?

Author: Natalia de Barbaro

• Natalia de Barbaro - a psychologist. Natalia de Barbaro organises her own development workshops for women called "A Room of One's Own".