Brain Food #843: Going in circles
Reflections on progress
Thoughts of the day
As always, the end of the year brings with it reflections about what has been, what could have been, and where we are on our hopelessly solitudinous journeys.
We tend to think of narratives as linear, but the idea of a linear narrative can be deceptive, implying constant, obvious progress, always moving in a forward direction, away from where we started.
As another year starts we might find ourselves standing in the same place, slightly changed, but without any clear landmark events to grasp, at least not with the clarity that comes in the earlier years of life, or with little to look forward to. As one moves through the years, there are multiple narratives to maintain, weeks can seem repetitive, setbacks lead to unexpected changes, and the milestones begin to fade.
Waiting for the big milestones, especially the ones not defined by ourselves, can be a form of self-sabotage: “This is precisely the risk modern man runs: he may wake up one day to find that he has missed half his life.” (Carl Jung)
In the hero’s journey, the hero must return home for the adventure to be completed. Perhaps a better visual for our endeavours in life is a circle, which Plato also suggested was the shape of the soul. In some years, progress is not an event, it’s a continuum. And if we find ourselves back where we started, maybe that was the purpose all along.
As Romantic thinker Novalis said, “Where are we really going? Always home.”
From The Denial of Death by Louise Glück:
"I see, he said, that you no longer
wish to resume your former life,
to move, that is, in a straight line as time
suggests we do, but rather (here he gestured toward the lake)
in a circle, which aspires to
that stillness at the heart of things,
though I prefer to think it also resembles a clock.”
Christian Marclay’s The Clock is an art installation film that invites audiences to patiently sit in a theatre and watch the passing of time, through a continuous edit from various moments in film where a character tells or views the time in synchronicity with the local time of the viewer. It also reflects what people are likely to be doing at specific moments during the day, so the film shows people sleeping in the early hours of the morning, or eating in the evening.
When the film restarts, after 24 hours, the work might be the same, but that does not necessarily apply to us.
I have come to realize that most of what happens is definitely not a linear march to some greater good but I was happier when I thought it was.