Hi again. At the end of last year, I wrote that time felt like it wasn’t moving forward for me — or more so, that my life didn’t feel like it was moving forward, exactly. But maybe, I said, that was OK: “Lately I’ve been thinking that maybe linear isn’t even the right framework,” I wrote — “it feels better to think about patterns, cycles, things that repeat but change.” In other words, it felt more useful to think about it as a spiral: moving around an idea or a goal, looking for new angles, getting further away and then closer again but from a new vantage.
This feels so poignant for me right now. It’s comforting to see this is the way of life for so many. Only this year, after nearly 15 years in therapy, have I begun to be kind and understanding to myself when I realize I am re-learning a topic, or revisiting a concept anew that I have visited many times before. It can be so frustrating but perhaps the problem is we are set the expectation of the linear. You learn addition and subtraction and you are meant to know it for the rest of your life but most concepts of modern humanity are not so simple. Perhaps very few ideas that lead to a thriving life can be fully understood on first examination. Thanks for sharing such a thoughtful re-examination of this idea. I hope it helps you thrive.
This feels so poignant for me right now. It’s comforting to see this is the way of life for so many. Only this year, after nearly 15 years in therapy, have I begun to be kind and understanding to myself when I realize I am re-learning a topic, or revisiting a concept anew that I have visited many times before. It can be so frustrating but perhaps the problem is we are set the expectation of the linear. You learn addition and subtraction and you are meant to know it for the rest of your life but most concepts of modern humanity are not so simple. Perhaps very few ideas that lead to a thriving life can be fully understood on first examination. Thanks for sharing such a thoughtful re-examination of this idea. I hope it helps you thrive.