Saturday, March 23, 2024 at 1:12 AM
And so, the Princess of Wales has cancer and King Charles has cancer, and the Duchess is still black, and Isis killed dozens in Moscow, and the killings and starvation continues in Gaza, and the killings continue in Belize, and Guatemala is still harassing us, and Donald Trump is desperate to find money to pay his bond, and Joe Biden is getting older, and the earth is warmer than ever, and AI will take over, and Belize and Manhattan and New Orleans are sinking, and life goes on!
They say, and by “they” I mean people used to say, and still say, that what goes around, comes around. That life is this continuous cycle that we live through. I don’t believe that. I have lived long enough to see people do the most horrible acts of evil and have paid no consequences, everyday people and famous people. They live long lives and die peacefully or painlessly and in their sleep. I’ve also seen people who lead good lives die early and suffer painful deaths, like my younger sister; but we all die anyway. And please don’t tell me they’ll pay for their wrongdoings in the afterlife; that’s aspirational and not grounded in reality, in my opinion.
I believe that we live life in a more meandering to straight line, from birth till death. That our experiences mostly come from our desired outcome of the way we want to live. That we choose our path, our destinations, and seldom end up where we thought we would, most of time. We make choices that we believe are advantageous to us, and correct our course when we lose our compass, usually, but not always. We become hostages to our environment, the one that we were born into; and that usually determines our pathway into the future, and finally, the end.
To me, the only cyclical thing in life is Mother Nature. Spring, summer, autumn, winter. The seasons change without fail; the planting and the nurturing and the harvesting, those are part of life’s cycle, and are so precious to observe, and to know that there’s order in the world. If only the rest of our existence was so predestined, so predictable and comforting! What a ting!
I believe that it is human nature to want to grow and change, always moving and seeking something better, usually, never resting on one’s laurels. The cycles are all around us; we circle the sun and moon and stars, everything goes round and round, except for us human beings. The immutable bye laws of nature do not apply to us, except for the part about being born and dying! To me, that is the only cycle that matters. The rest is just the living part, living and existing in a manner of our own choosing, or for the greater good of our pod!
Glen