The Circularity of Time (and Life)

I think back upon one of my favorite television shows of all time, HBO's True Detective. Where Matthew McConaughey's character of Rust Cohle has many emotional and philosophical monologues. In particular, he had one such monologue that affected me. Rust proclaimed that "Time is a flat circle." What does that mean exactly? Well, according to Rust, time moves in this cyclical cycle where regardless if we peons that go with the flow realize it, we are going to be doing the same stuff over and over and over and over again. How can this be though? How can time be a flat circle? We have free will, do we not? We can choose exactly what we want to do and when and how...Or can we?



I'm a big man, in terms of weight and in terms of height. I've always been like this. Ever since I was little, I had a lot of friends. When I was very little and children were in the stage of showing affection by hurting one another, girls befriended me. If you didn't know me, I was intimidating. These girls and some boys who were afraid of being harmed in lieu of a show of real affection need not to worry with me around. I kept the assholes away, to be frank. I would later find this is true for most if not all of my life. Of course later on these people that befriended me then would become best friends of mine and we would grow to hold similar opinions and ideas and so on and so forth. This is when the cyclical nature of time began for me. As I grew older, I befriended more people for personalities sake, or so I thought. In particular at the end of seventh grade, I befriended a female, a damsel in distress type of a girl. She had a horrid relationship, she was suffering from depression, and I pitied her. I began talking to her, trying to be kind, gentle, sweet, understanding...but in the end most of what occurred was me having to be serious, stern or down-right mean with her to get her to snap out of her depression and parasitic relationship. This girl leeched off of me for attention, no doubt. Her current boyfriend at the time really did not pay any kind of care or heed to her and so she sought attention elsewhere. Countless long hours of my nights were spent talking to her, for nary a thank you or any kind of appreciation. I was there to make her feel better, to be the person her boyfriend would not be. The cycle continues. Most recently in terms of this cycle, I have been dealing with a series of fights and friendships and things...and it's the same scenario...a female needs my assistance and I'm there to provide it...but I feel like I end up getting screwed in the end as she continues on happier and I'm missing a friend due to the fight we had to have where I had to defend the girl...



You must be asking yourself, just what in the hell does this have to do with time and circularity and life? Well, I'm getting there so just hold on a minute. I pride myself on a slogan: "I'm sorry for not being sorry." Like everyone should have, I have a strong moral compass. I have a strong system of beliefs. Call it stubborn (it is), but I will not change how I act or who I am just because someone doesn't like it. If there is legitimate reason then yes, I can change, but I'm not changing on a lark. For the longest time, I thought that by taking the role of defender in these cases was just who I was. It was all apart of my morality and my moral compass. Well, I've lost friends and countless hours doing this, and what have I gained from it? A sense of satisfaction because I stayed true to my morality and I stayed true to who I am? Honestly, that's all I ever needed. I can pat myself on the back and say "Wow, I'm such a strong person. I did myself proud." But I started thinking...why is it that I'm really doing this? It happens far too often, it's almost cyclical. That is when I remembered "Time is a flat circle." So I started thinking...what if I do not have the free will to change who I am? What if I am programmed to be this way forever and ever and ever. I'm always akin to taking a certain side and acting a certain way, not because I willingly choose to, but because I HAVE to. It's a rather bleak situation and bleak feeling, is it not? Knowing that your life and your actions are predestined? The funny part is, that when I began to think about this kind of predestination... I did not have the want to change my actions and not get involved in conflicts on the behalf of over people. I never once thought or said "Perhaps I should try sitting on the sidelines and not white knighting for every person I know."



Music connects to me the most strongly, so I take from Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here." Roger Waters croons "We're just two lost souls swimmin' in a fish bowl, year after year..." I think this describes our lives and our existence quite well. We're all just fish, swimming around in this closed environment. We're given the illusion that we can go farther and farther out from his closed-off bowl and yet, we cannot. However the illusion is strong enough that we're happy with it. We have little castles, and treasure chests that open and blow bubbles at our faces. All of these gaudy baubles and things are meant to just distract us from the reality that we're destined to just exist here in ways that we cannot control. We're destined to swim endlessly in circles back and forth, back and forth in this fish bowl of a life, thinking we can actually do something about it.



So think about it some, perhaps in your own life you experience a continual event, maybe it is a hardship, a loss, or perhaps it is some kind of great gain. Do you ever feel like you are the center of this problem? Do you feel like it is drawn to you? You are the catalyst that starts it? It is because you're just predestined to be how you are. This great wheel of life just keeps on a-spinning and we are helpless to it's turning. We simply have to sit on the spokes and let it carry us to our next predestined event.