Things Will Get Better Soon
At the beginning of this year I saw the writing on the wall, and when most people were posting about their New Years resolutions I instead railed against the last decade of my life and the hardships I had to endure and steeled myself for the coming acceleration of crazy I saw on the horizon (and that was before we even heard of COVID).
Most of us humans like to believe we have some control over life and the events which befall us. In fact, that is the entire point of religion, of which a far majority of humans belong, because the impermanence of life is too overwhelming a prospect for most people to handle without some kind of social support, because most of us don’t at all understand the point of life or why we are here on this earth, but because our fanciful beliefs which try to make sense out of life fail to actually provide the comfort and peace they are ostensibly created to fulfill we also turn toward materialism and consumerism desperately searching for ways to feel whole, safe, and fulfilled, but because material things also cannot satisfy our human needs this too fails and we remain lost and frustrated even when experiencing great success.
The baby boom generation is coming on their final years, and the desperate pursuit of materialism has failed to give them the sense of satisfaction that they were told it would, and even while possessing some of the most incredible and unprecedented wealth and prosperity in the entire history of humankind find the prospect of death and the end of their lives to be maddening, perhaps realizing too late that material things and dogmatic adherence to religious beliefs were never the salve they thought them to be, and with little time left are scrambling to find some sense of security as they fast approach the finish line. Some generation X and most millennials have watched our parents’ collective psychological struggles and failure to find satisfaction in money and stuff and emotional and religious fervor, so even though our economic prospects are severely limited are mostly watching this chaos with some sense of detachment, understanding that we don’t really want to adopt the ideals and values of the previous generation anyway, but also not fully seeing how our own lives will play out, even as we ourselves are beginning to near middle age.
Life is cyclical. It has been this way since the very first creature amassed its cells on this planet, and will continue to be cyclical long after there are no more humans left on this earth. The cyclical nature of existence is even demonstrated in the physical structures of the universe, with everything from the shape of planets and their orbits to the shape of entire galaxies demonstrating the literal circular (elliptical, for you pedants), spherical, infinite nature of time and space. Our years do not progress one into the other but repeat in a seemingly endless cycle, with no real beginning and no real end, and generation upon generation of humans is born and die while each of us mistakes the significance of our own lives as something finite rather than endless, even those of us who purport to believe in a higher purpose. Even such mundane things as the housing market, economic prosperity, and even our behavior patterns are cyclical. Two years ago my own father shouted at me when I brought up the coming recession, which had been discussed by economists who pointed out clear indicators of a looming downturn, as if everything was fine and even though he has actually lived through and been severely challenged by every one of the many recessions which have occurred over the last six decades and of all people should be aware of the cyclical and impermanent nature of economic progress.
The kind of tumult we are seeing today is not actually a low-point, but a climax, a culmination and reckoning of the consequences of the past, a cycle which repeats itself with such regularity it can be measured and observed, yet each time we step into these moments of apparent instability choose to believe it is novel and unprecedented, as if this kind of thing does not repeat itself with amazing consistency to the point of being entirely predictable. Politics in the United States have always been this seedy and this exploitive and this desperate, because we do not understand human nature and believe the atrocities of the past to be the failings of less evolved human beings rather than the constant nature of humanity and our equal capacity both for progress and destruction.
The cyclical nature of the Universe engenders balance into reality, but what most people think of as balance is actually imbalance—balance does not mean being very good at keeping our house tidy or our checkbook out of the red. Balance means equal parts of both sides, work and play, joy and pain, money and poverty. We wish to redefine balance to subvert our fears of loss and heartache, but reality cannot be subverted, and what we see happening now on the world stage are the consequences of trying to subvert reality and the psychotic break which occurs when we cannot accept life on life’s terms.
For our life experience to be balanced we MUST live through economic disparity, personal misfortune and loss, and social and political conflict because without such experiences we would not understand the true depths of existence, which is the entire point of life. To us we desire money, prosperity, and joy, but the Universe desires that we know all aspects of life, not simply those which are comfortable, and so bad things must happen to us that our full potential as a mortal creature be realized. If we become aware of this immutable balance of nature we can in turn find value even in experiences which break our hearts and stress our soul. There are far more valuable things in life than money and possessions, a concept that even the most adherent religionists fail to understand, pleading with God to give them money when that is the very last thing which would actually enrich our lives.
The good thing about cycles is that no one part ever lasts. While this means that prosperity is never endless it also means hardship and turmoil are neither. But because as mortal animals we are more attuned to threats to our safety and security we tend to feel more overwhelmed and despairing during times of strife than we are soothed by times of prosperity. But it is a cycle nonetheless, and as such all phases of a cycle at some point eventually transition to the next.
I sometimes feel bad waking up every day with joy and excitement when so many people are suffering and having trouble. Sure, I don't have a pool or a garden as I would like, and my book sales evaporated in the pandemic, but that doesn't mean I don't find fulfillment every day, and even find the slower pace of things to be cathartic and allow the kind of introspection and peace which doesn't happen when our lives are prosperous and hectic, which comes from recognizing the realities of life rather than ignoring those we find inconvenient. The imbalances of the past are being balanced by what is occurring now, and all we must do is be patient. There are valuable lessons and growth to be achieved during such times which are not available to us when things are at an even pace—protests for equality and political action to right the wrongs of the past are what are achieved now, which result in greater progress in times to come. It may still take another several years before we come out the other side, since the resolution of past disparities is not yet resolved, but rather than waiting for things to get better we can take advantage of this time to experience the depths of existence and grow beyond the bounds of mortal life if we face our problems with courage and faith and love for one another and look to find satisfaction in what we have rather than what we think we should have. And when things do get better we can use that time to shore ourselves up against future adversity rather than waste it as previous generations have done, because there will again be times like this one, knowing that we will always encounter the cycles of existence and using this time to our advantage by recognizing the impermanence of life not as something to be afraid but that which we truly benefit, without which it would not be possible to transcend to a higher state of existence and find value in the non material.