cycles

Cycles keep us circling through life until we get something right

By David McElroy · September 26, 2019

It seems like I’ve been here before
I can’t remember when
But I got this funny feeling
That I’ll be back once again
— Harry Chapin, “Circle”

My life is full of cycles. Some are obvious. Some become apparent only after I’ve circled back to somewhere I’ve been before. And some cycles suddenly feel familiar when I realize I’ve experienced it in some other part of my life.

I’ve always been drawn to these cycles. I’m endlessly fascinated by the beauty and symbolism of sunrise and sunset. Even before I took photos, I was mesmerized by this cycle that made it seem as though the sun and moon were always playfully chasing one another.

Over the last decade, I’ve become deeply connected to the seasonal cycle. The more I watch autumn come and make everything dormant in winter — only to bring everything back to life in spring — the more I compare it to other things in my life.

Today I learned about theologian Walter Brueggemann’s conception of a cycle of orientation, disorientation and reorientation — and I immediately identified with the pattern. It seems that I’ve gone through this cycle over and over again.

I have been been going through the darkest of night for most of the last decade, but Brueggemann’s concept gives me hope that the break of a new dawn is almost here.

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Nature’s renewal and growth boost my hope for my own life each year

By David McElroy · June 23, 2018

Four months ago, this leaf didn’t exist. The tree in my back yard on which it grows looked dead. There were no signs of life there. But this evening, it’s vibrant and lush — green and beautiful and full of life.

For many generations, human beings were directly connected to the cycles of nature. Their lives changed depending on the season. Their understanding of the seasons was crucial to their survival. They learned to plant in the spring, work fields in the summer, to harvest in the fall, and to protect themselves in the winter.

Modern humans are shielded from the cycles of nature. We have temperature-controlled homes and offices. We have pretty much the same food year-round, even if we don’t quite understand how that happens. My life in the summer isn’t much different from my life in the winter. Yours probably isn’t much different, either.

Reconnecting with the cycles of nature — and understanding what they teach me about myself and about this life — has been one of the most important parts of the last decade or so for me. And watching this leaf and all the other growing greenery in my back yard has me thinking this evening about that lesson once more.

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Something small just made me happy. The specifics don’t matter, but I found myself smiling and I felt a kind of warm joy filling my heart and mind. In that brief moment of ecstasy, I felt the irrational desire to talk with a particular person. It wasn’t a calculated thought or a rational want. It wasn’t even that I wanted to tell the person about this particular thing. I simply felt ecstatic joy — and I somehow connected that feeling to this person. I can’t explain it. If we’re wise, we’ll pay attention to such moments, because the instincts of our hearts and minds often know more truth than our conscious and rational brains do. The same thing can be true in moments of great pain and suffering. If we pay attention to who our hearts are drawn to in such moments — of extreme joy or extreme hurt — we learn something about ourselves. I don’t know why. I only know that our gut instincts sometimes understand deep truths about ourselves that our rational brains haven’t yet figured out.

It started out as a satirical joke, but some friends liked the idea, so now it’s a real Facebook profile picture frame. If you’ve never heard of Moms Against Virtue-Signaling, let me explain. One of the dumber elements of social media is that it allows people to publicly signal their goodness and virtue to others — without actually doing anything of substance. So you see photo frames around profile photos saying things such as, “Moms Against Racism,” as though they’re standing up against those evil moms who are in favor of racism. It’s meaningless virtue-signaling and it deserves to be mocked, so I made a frame and published it on Facebook’s frame system today. If you go to your own Facebook profile picture and add a frame, then search for Moms Against Virtue-Signaling, you can select it. About a dozen of my friends are using it so far. It’s just fun satire — at least until Facebook decides it “goes against our community standards.” Or something. It’s just a fun way of mocking something that deserves to be mocked.

When I first told you about the project that would become DavidMcElroy.TV, I thought it would launch by mid-May. Since today is the last day of May — and I’m still not close to launching a finished product — here’s a brief update. The graphic above is the latest rough mockup of the format, but it’s still subject to change. Even the logo isn’t yet set in stone. Motion graphics are really difficult when you’re starting from scratch. Sunday night, my camera stopped recording, so it has to be sent off for repair. I have an older camera that I’ll keep using for testing, but I can’t launch without the better one. The audio system developed a low buzz this weekend that has me puzzled. I’ll be taking all the equipment over to the home of a local audio engineer who’s volunteered to help me figure out what I’ve done wrong. On top of all that, my on-camera performance seems to get worse with each test I do. There are days when I think I’m crazy to be attempting this. And in truth, I probably am insane to do it, but being crazy has never stopped me before. I’m at least a month away from launch and it could be a few months. Thanks for being patient — and thanks for all the support and enthusiasm for the project that you’ve sent my way.

I received the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine Monday — and I’m happy to report that I’m neither dead nor a zombie controlled by Bill Gates and Co. Eligibility was recently opened in Alabama to everyone who’s 16 or older, so I signed up for the Pfizer vaccine at a site run by a local university. I know this is a political issue for a lot of people, but that honestly baffles me. We can disagree about whether such a vaccine should be mandatory — which I’m against — but as a voluntary choice, it seems like an easy choice now that it’s been safely given to millions of people. Is it a perfect preventative? Of course not. But the decision seemed obvious to me when looking at the statistics and evidence. I haven’t had any of the side effects that some people have experienced, but that’s supposed to be more of an issue after the second dose, which I’ll get on May 3. In the meantime, I’ll let you know if I grow a third arm — or if the secret microchip kicks in and someone starts trying to control me remotely. All kidding aside, getting the vaccine seems like a rational voluntary choice to me.

I get a lot of email from readers. Some of it is fascinating and useful. Some of it is full of confessions that people want to share with a stranger. Some people write to ask advice. What’s really surprising, though, is the small percentage that seems to come from mentally unbalanced people. When I started using the metaphor about being an alien — the tagline at the top of each page here — it never occurred to me that I’d start hearing from people who took it seriously. But every few months, I get a strange email — such as the one above from a few months back — from someone who seems to think I’m claiming to be an actual alien. The first time it happened, I laughed. By the time it became a semi-regular thing, I was simply appalled. For the record, I can provide no proof that I’m an alien, because … well … it’s just a metaphor. I do feel like an alien among human beings, but as far as I know, I’m just as earthbound as you are. It’s just a metaphor. Honest. Or at least, that’s what my lizard-beast overlords told me to say.

cycles

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