X-The Wheel of Fortune

I think that something we often forget is that life isn’t actually a straight line. We like to believe that, because it heels in nicely to our concept of memory and linear time. Not many people want to confront the concept of time, so it becomes simpler to just allow the idea of time as a measurable commodity to stand. Plus, we have collectively made agreements about time, and if one of the collective starts suddenly ignoring that….things get wonky.

So I get it.

However.

Time is actually a circle. And life is truly a wheel. All of our natural instincts travel in cycles, and the animal in our hearts longs for that simple reality. On some level I truly believe that much of our stress in life revolves around the fact that we forget this, and that we force the circle into the line. But what would happen if we brought the circle back and decided to let the wheel roll? How would we feel about life then?

It is all a cycle, my lovelies. Every single thing about life is a wheel. Things go up, things go down. Some days we achieve, some days we fail. Some days we ride high and can see the entire vista of our goals. Other days we wallow low and can’t see our own hands through the darkness—let alone what tomorrow might bring. This is the true reality, and if we let it be a governing concept in our lives, then we can get back into harmony with the cycles into which we were born.

So think about that way of living for a moment. Think about the ease of pressure brought about by the thought that things happen in their time. You cannot force a seed to grow any faster than it will. Nor can you make an idea ripe for sharing if the time isn’t right for it to be received. There is peace in that acceptance if you take a breath and let it be true. Patience and peace become the governing principles of life.

Yet we consistently deny that and try to force things into being right now. We allow the petty mind of desire to convince us that we are in control of what we get and when. We put demands on ourselves that are so laden with expectations that exist far outside the natural order of things. All the time, everywhere, we see life being forced, pushed, stretched and crammed into a timeline that may or may not be authentic to its own time. The result is always some form of disharmony that we have to then force, push or stretch in a different way to make it work. Do you see? By not riding the wheel, we are always always working at keeping things moving straight.

How tiresome.

Life is a wheel, and we can always trust that this will be the case. The sun always comes up; the seasons always change; the moon always phases; the tides always come in; the trees always fruit---but they do so in their own time and in their own cycle. Why do we want to be outside of that? What makes our human desires so much more important that we actually think that we can control the rhythm of time?

Perhaps it is because we have tried to move ourselves beyond the demands of nature. Perhaps it is because we fear death so much that we try to deny that the wheel even exists. Perhaps it is simple greed.

I don’t know.

But what I do know is that hanging on to linear planning so tightly has driven many of us to the brink of despair. Every failure is just a failure. Every fallow season is just a loss of success. There is no sense of cyclical peace which allows every failure to be but a moment of the wheel’s turning and every fallow season to be just a breath before it turns to growth.

If we tune into The Wheel of Fortune and begin to trust that everything is merely a second in the ever changing rotation of opposites, we can develop a harmonic with our natural selves. Nothing becomes a permanent mark of time or space and therefore nothing bears great weight. Accepting the wheel into our lives levels the playing field of our emotions, truly allowing us to embody this too shall pass.

That which goes up must come down. But hey. That which is down must go up.

And there can be great comfort in that….if you learn to love the ride.