IMAGINE THAT A BUDDY OF YOURS tells you he’s going to do something completely insane, something absolutely, preposterously stupid and dangerous, such as going skydiving for the very first time while he’s drunk as a woodlouse in a rum barrel.
As a good friend, you’d be forced to say something like, “Please get in my car. I’ll drive you to the hospital where you can be treated for your illness.” Jumping drunk and unprepared out of a plane is right batty, no question. Now imagine that your friend reflects on your offer of hospitalization and says, “Okay, I’ll take some skydiving classes before I jump, and I’ll go sober.” Doesn’t that sound more reasonable? Of course it does. It almost sounds like a good plan. Your friend has just demonstrated relative risk. Jumping out of a plane is always risky, but jumping out of a plane with no training while hugely impaired is so risky that, by comparison, this new plan of pitching himself out of a plane 3,000 feet above the ground with his wits about him suddenly seems sort of okay. If you compare the relative risks, jumping out of a plane in this condition is much better than Plan A, which was absolutely a piece of crazy pie.
Teenagers use the concept that everything’s relative to great effect. For instance, they might propose that their very solid 11 PM curfew be moved to 3 AM. Once you recover from the shock, you find yourself agreeing to midnight, because relative to 3 AM, midnight suddenly seems like a winner.
Knitters also can use this idea of relativity to their advantage. Knitting has taught me that if you’re having a big knitting problem, you just have to assess it in relative terms. Imagine that you’re knitting a sweater for yourself and you have a 38-inch chest. Think your sweater requires lots of work? Get a spouse with a 50-inch chest and start trying to knock off knitwear for him. All of a sudden, that first sweater doesn’t seem so unreasonable, does it? Has it occurred to you that ordinary socks take too long? If you knit some knee-highs, your return to regular socks will be painless and euphoric. Are you finding a baby blanket to be a broad expanse of boring knitting? If you cast on an afghan on small needles, you’ll beg for the baby blanket. Have you thought that the lace scarf you’re making is fiddly and tedious? I have an heirloom lace shawl pattern you can borrow that will knock the sense right back into you. For every knitting challenge, there’s a relative project that will send you rushing gleefully back into the arms of the project that was breaking your will to live before you considered the alternatives. It works every time. Shift the gauge, shift the size, shift the complexity … suddenly, you shift your perspective.
Are you under the impression that you’ll be knitting that baby sweater for the rest of your life? Yeah. Try making a baby. It’s all relative.