Encircled
“I’ll be there man” the dude says in response his landlord Marty’s invitation to come give him notes on “my dance quintet, you know, my cycle.”
As we approach the winter solstice and New Year’s, we are ending and beginning a cycle of time. Cycles work in circles. Each ending and beginning is seamless. TIme continues to move, the universe continues to expand (or maybe in black holes, contract) and we continue onward. The flip from December 31, 2019 11:59:59pm to January 1, 2020 12:00:00am rarely goes unnoticed. Most of time is unremarkable, this time is usually marked and meaningful.
The meanings are simply what we ascribe. The beginning and ending are convenient markers. There are only finish lines and starting lines if we make them up.
Narratives make us human. Stories are how we share, celebrate events, and triangulate our place in time. As they go from person to person, they are, in a sense, personal. They get transformed through each iteration, like a broken telephone game, and become communal. The seed of the original personal meaning might still be there or it might be completely altered.
It is a fun exercise to celebrate a year’s end with stories of what has come and what we plan to do next year. Stories help us connect and smooth out the rough edges of our circular existence.
On the other hand, a few choose to engage with the unstoried. The fringes of consciousness where meaning and story are not directed and edges are fuzzy. The light and dark are a bit grey. The transpersonal experience and the collective unconscious meet in an indeterminable middle of our meaningless circle where the referencelessness can feel destabilizing.
When we raise our year end glasses what will we toast?
I propose three toasts.
Celebration of all that has come to pass
Enthusiasm for all that is on its way
Reverence for the unknown, the mystery, (as one might take communion)
This was inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essay Circles totally worth the 30 minute read.
