Cycles and Patterns

The more days that accumulate behind me, the more patterns in my life I can discern.  

I recognize that like the image above, our life spans flow not in neat straight lines from the moment of birth to our eventual demise, but instead they flow in spirals slowly circling round us like the earth annually revolving around the sun.

Our timelines, while moving constantly forward away from this moment and the next, are also continually cycling back near to where we once began to allow a more educated perspective shift for the next revolution around our limited existence here.

The effect of this perpetual spiraling allows for an increased awareness perspective that permits us to observe ourselves slowly evolving through each growth experience, along with the hopeful goal of gaining greater understanding of our capabilities and limitations while we are encased in this restrictive human vessel.

Example being: If you made a noticeable mistake in a previous unpleasant experience, then when a similar experience again presents itself before you, you now have the advantage of your past action’s memory to reconsider its effectiveness or lack thereof; and you can use that hard-gained knowledge to make a better decision moving forward in THIS current situation—rather than simply repeating the same mistake a second time. 

That’s great isn’t it?  To get a second chance to get it right.   Well maybe it is, because while yes, we all have that ‘learn-ability from past mistakes’ advantage if we use it, learning from our past mistakes is not broadly utilized individually or collectively.

And that is one of our largest problems both as self-aware, evolving beings and as a progressing society in general.  To an overwhelming degree we, individually and collectively, just keep making the same mistakes over and over except with different people and in slightly different environments.  

Unfortunately it often takes a lot of cycling back around a few additional times into similar situations or experiences before we comprehend ‘the lesson’ from them so we can then move forward to a new learning opportunity and to gain even greater awareness of ourselves and our primary intentions.

Or as Yoda might have quipped: “Creatures of habit are ye. Dense and slow to comprehend ye be.”

So as age and time play-out in your life, stop for a just moment or two and sit yourself down intentionally to witness both where you’ve been against where you currently are; and if you don’t like what you see before you in your present life, then take an entirely NEW path forward away from your comfort zone—away from your standard behavior patterns—away from your self-imposed restrictions—and breathe NEW air in a very different environment with better intentions for increasing your knowledge-base and mental acuity.

Observe, assess, reflect before you auto-react, and then walk a different way from this day forward. Be a different person. Shift your perspective on life and yourself and on everything around you, so the next time all those years hurry past and you eventually reevaluate where you are, you can say with certainty, “Yes, I evolved.” And know that it is true.