Scenes 3 - “Life As A Carousel”
“What goes around, comes around”.
”As you sow, so shall you reap”.
These somewhat hackneyed adages infer basic tenets for our understanding of ‘karma” - the idea that how one acts towards and treats others will come back to you in the same way. That is to say, if you do bad, bad things will happen to you. But, in reality, we know that is not necessarily true. Repercussions do not always happen to people who act ‘badly’, harmfully, or against the interests of others. Ironically, the converse is often true, as described in the title of Harold Kushner’s book, “Why Bad Things Happen To Good People”. So, it appears, in so far as individual behavior is concerned, that ‘what goes around’, does not inexorably come back to haunt you.
I refer to ‘individual behavior’ because on a grander, more universal scale it appears that no matter our morals or intentions, our religion or ethical underpinnings, as a “collective”, history affirms that our specie is bound to bare witness to the repetition and replay of our failures, foibles and follies for all of time. Humans seem to possess a “forgetter” that precludes the acceptance of history as teacher, informer, advisor or source of wisdom. George Santayana had it correct: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. Except “those” refers, as likely, not to particular individuals, rather to a class of beings called “Humans”. Indeed, it appears that we are condemned to repeat the worst of our attributes and inclinations in a divinely self-mutilating and destructive manner.
Now many may assert that history does not repeat itself, as it would then be predictable. But, that misses the point. A quote attributed to Mark Twain, correctly or otherwise, is most relevant, “History doesn’t repeat itself…but it often rhymes”. History is more like an “echo” than a digital recording. It is not exactly the same, necessarily, in amplitude or affect. Rather, it is a reiteration distinct from the original in kind, but NOT ESSENCE. Mount “Vesuvius has erupted about three dozen times since 79 A.D., most recently from 1913-1944. The 1913-1944 eruption is thought to be the end of an eruptive cycle that began in 1631. It has not erupted since then, but Vesuvius is an active volcano , it will erupt again”. And, in being ‘active’ it is, in effect, erupting even in its dormant phases. Doesn’t it feel just that way now?
Marcus Aurelius seems to understand, "Whatever happens has always happened, and always will, and is happening at this very moment, everywhere. Just like this." Even Ecclisastes refers to this tendency, “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”; and, “That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past.” “The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.” Even I got into the game at the age of 17 with this poem,
“See how quickly midnight yields to noon,
noon midnight
How swift the undertow sucks a void
for the following wave
to flow.
And so have my dreams
Come and gone
each denying the feeling
and in doing so
denying there ever having existed
only to exist once more
in a non-existent recognition.
And so have my days
given way to days
of rising suns
of setting suns
of moonlight beams
brightless by dawn
Each, at times, shining simultaneously,
Each, at times, silent beyond sight.
And so have the years
given way to years
seas rise
shores recede
worlds revolve
The same but different
different with no change
changing to the sameness
that was…
As the wave sucks a void
for the following wave
to flow,
to flow…
Certainly the work of a late teen, but the musings are timeless. Yes?
I wasn’t in bad company as it is Nietzsche who suggested the theory of “eternal recurrence” - that the universe and all existence and energy has been recurring, and will continue to recur, in a self-similar form an infinite number of times across infinite time or space. “Everything we have done or will do we will do over and over and over again forever."
Reassuring?
But that’s life.
Or is it?
