Friday, February 5, 2010

Fortuna's Wheel

Time is something we humans have been fascinated with for a long, long time. Even as individuals many of us think about going backward, or forward, in time. Backward to relive old experiences and possibly correct some errors in judgment we made. Forward to see what life will be like. We hate unpleasant surprises.

Not everyone is afflicted with this condition. Many people are quite content to live life in the moment. They could care less what happened in the past, or what is in store in the future. Now is the moment, and now is where they live.

I'm not one of those people. I'm a past person. I see past joys and wonder why they had to end. I see past sorrows and wonder if I would have averted them - if I had only known then what I know now.

But were past joys more joyful than current joys? Or is it simply that now that I can see them with a beginning, middle, and end, I recognize them as joys, whereas now I'm never quite sure what I have until it's done. I suppose that's the advantage of living in the now. Every moment is its own beginning, middle, and end.

There's an addage (I don't know exactly how it goes) that says we can only know the heights of joy by knowing the depths of sorrow. And vice versus, too. In essence, if I understand this aright, one cannot be any happier than they have been sad. Neither can they be any sadder than they were happy. Sounds safe enough. Also sounds dull. Almost robotic. I don't live that way. I don't want to. I'll take my great sorrows, because I know that coming my way is great joy.

Meanwhile, once again I haven't got anything intelligent to say.

2 comments:

Ms Sparrow said...

It's great that you harbor the knowledge of better things to come.
Attitude is everything, as they always say.

Bevie said...

I know I can write pretty depressing at times, but I don't avoid telling things the way they are. But just because I say things are bad doesn't always mean I'm feeling bad. It's just the way things are.

For now.