Cycles

It’s been a long week. A friend passed away on my birthday this year, which was a pretty harsh experience. While I have been processing my emotions and grieving how I need to grieve, I’ve had a lot of time to be in my own head. To keep myself from spiralling too much, I’ve been trying to observe the world around me with a separate perspective. 

I was thinking that everything in this world belonged to a cycle. Cycles are everywhere, but I’ve realized that they aren’t a part of absolutely everything. It’s true that life is a cycle; we all start the same and end the same, and then it “repeats” in someone else. But what about a persons memories? I think memories you share with a person are “linear”; they’re singular. They don’t repeat. The memories that my friend and I shared between just us, even something as little as walking down the hall or sharing a quick joke during class, those exist only for me now. When I go, they’ll be gone forever. Never to be reproduced or reflected on again. 

It gives me a new appreciation to the alter and the meaning of it. Lessons and knowledge are memories; as such, they are, in their base form, singular. However, they possess the ability to become part of a cycle. We learn, we develop, we teach. Those we teach, they learn, they develop, and then they teach. Makes sense?

I am trying to focus on identifying those linear aspects of my life; those things that do not automatically belong to a cycle. For certain things, like knowledge and insights, I am trying to allow both my own and others the opportunity to become a part of a cycle. Yet other things, like those memories I shared with my friend, the beauty of them is that they don’t belong to a cycle. They are fleeting and temporary; as such, they have so much value.