Most of you coming across this will have intuited the circular nature of your timeline.
You have almost certainly had repeat experiences, repeat failures, repeat successes. The bullet points of a conventional life are themselves circular. You are born. You get an education. You get a job. You get married and have kids. Once born, your children do the same and you will experience, through them, all of these milestones again. And maybe even a third time if you are blessed to witness the birth of your grandchildren.
The night chases the day and the day chases the night. The seasons rotate one into the other, all a function of the spinning and spiraling of earth and sun, the progression of time marked by the near-perfectly circular orbit of the moon.
The people you’ve met keep showing up, not everyone and not all the time, but enough that there is a discernible pattern. The same lessons are impressed upon you time and again, perhaps the result of making the same futile choices over and over, but each time with just a bit more wisdom, maturity, and history behind you. After awhile, these men and women and recurring messages might be perceived as swirling around you, like the hot gasses that coalesce in the vacuum of space to form stars and planets and even entire galaxies. And all of these rotating, spiraling into some yet-to-be fully understood singularity, perhaps the mysterious point, if you will, of it all.
Gravity
And that mystery lies within the irresistible gravitational pull of the black hole at the center of our spiraling galaxy, just as the bewildering void of our own inevitable demise unspools the thread of our existence with every passing moment. The rise and fall of dynasties, the birth and death of paupers and kings, the global extinction events and the crescendo of new life to follow, there is a spiraling repetition that we can all learn from and adapt to, but we cannot take this for granted.
The circles of our life get tighter and tighter. The opportunities that present themselves, the opportunities that once lingered for years or even decades, disappear now in almost the same moment they arrive. With each passing breath there is a greater and greater urgency to make the most of what we have. To not do so is to host flailing desperation and pitiable regret as our funeral companions.
Make amends now.
Stop doing the things that are holding you back.
Begin, at once, the work that you know needs to be done.
Choose relentless forward progression over perfection.
Motion
Do not be misled by those who invite you to stillness. There is no stillness. Everything is in unyielding motion, the very fabric of life itself a tapestry of swarming, buzzing atomic vibrational energy. And at every moment we are tasked to manage and direct that energy into actions that respect the spiral, the opportunities for correction and growth that whiz by mercifully time and time again for us to address once and for all.
If we do this, the spiral will bring us new vistas, new challenges, new opportunities. Or, having accomplished what was necessary, we may find that our spool is now empty.
To the Muslim, we invite you to a consideration of the tawaf, the circumambulation of the Ka’ba. We invite you to a consideration of the structure of the Qur’an, with it’s cyclical refrain of the basmala offering context to all that follows. Everything, no matter how difficult, is to be understood as preceding from the infinite wellspring of God’s Mercy and Compassion. In the midst of hardship and heartache, embroiled in the gritty exigencies of human intercourse that daily assault our aesthetic sensibilities, we will forget that. And so we are reminded over and over and over again:
In the Name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate
Transition
Choose your companions well, for they are not so easily forgotten once invited into your spiral.
Choose your food with care. All that you derive from it will accompany you for many revolutions to come.
This ride comes with no brakes. Collision is inevitable, so wrap yourself in the formidable protection of your daily prayers. Live your religious life with intention. Keep the rope of God in hand lest you become entangled in the existential ruin of nihilistic confusion.
And also realize that you are not alone. We are all in this together, like winter’s snowflakes twisting and drifting into one another to form, eventually, that impregnable community of ice that cannot be ignored. Rigid, yes, but still a cool reprieve from the flames of fleeting distraction, and with a crystalline clarity that leaves no question as to who we are.
Until we melt away into the flourishing of those riding the spiral just behind.
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