The Cyclical Gift

Every end is a beginning.  That sounds cyclical.  It is.  Yet we think of time in the west as linear.  Why?  Since the beginning we have had a weekly pattern, the cyclical foundation of linear time, Like it or not, our supposed linear, chronological time is constantly in cyclical patterns.

Time is both linear - in that it keeps progressing forward in chronological pattern, and also cyclical, stuck in a very distinct weekly, monthly, and even annual cyclical pattern.  We can’t escape the patterns.  We don’t really want to.

There is something about these cyclical patterns that draws us into the fight of life.

Week after week after week we start over.  We begin again.  We learn to do what we have been doing.  We grow a little more. But the patterns persist.  The quiet anticipation of Monday gives way to the desperate relief of Friday, over and over and over again. 

Rest.  Work.  Play. Rest.  Wok.  Play. Rest.  Wok.  Play.

This is the pattern.  It is not something we created.  It is something that was given.  Something gifted to us.  A way of keeping time in a chronological world that would otherwise be overwhelming.  Whatever is coming, we can make it, one day, one week at a time.

That is the cyclical gift.  Burdensome things have a daily ending.  A weekly pattern.  Even the worst injustices have been survived with the hope of tomorrow.  So also the greatest joys end.  No matter how high, no matter how low, we can not take this moment with us into tomorrow

The night’s sleep clears the slate.  That mini-death reboots our conscousness.  What we went to bed thinking about we do not wake up thinking about.  Something is different.  Surprsingly so.  Our mind is taken to new places.  We are still in the same bodies, but we are different.

Dreams have taken us down new neural pathways and opened up new things.

Slowly, as consciousness comes, we remember who we are, where we are, what is going on. But something has changed.  Though our projects remain and whatever things we have to do are still there, they are not there in the same way they were the night before.

Today actually is a whole new thing.  A new start.  A new beginning.  A beginning again.  Real hope in legitimate possibility.  Of course there is continuity, but it is not meaningless repitition.  Time is not a trap, repeating the same thing over and over again.  There are breaks.

Chapters are a way to think of it.  Every great book chapter ends with a cliff-hanger.  I “need” to read the next chapter to find out what is going to happen.  This is life, no matter how much it may feel mindlessly cyclical, there are extraordinary breakthroughs happening every single day.

And we simply do not know what is coming around the corner.  That is the power of faith.  There is always the possibility for change, for a break in the pattern, for the unexpected plot twist.  No matter how bad, or good, we simply do not know what’s around that corner.

There will be curveballs.  Unexpected things.  We will find the house in disarray.  We will be called to rebuild its walls.  To protect and keep others.  To be kind.  To be tough.  To be big.  To be small.  And we just don’t know what need will be coming around the corner.  Ever.

That is the beauty and mystery of life.  There is a story unravelling at every turn.  It is not about huge breakthroughs or discoveries. The smallest pivots, gleanings, and re-thinkings something after all connect to make for this incredible story come to life.  We are in the story.

And we, ultimately, are not writing the script.