I woke one recent morning with Joni Mitchell in my head singing one of her sixties greats, The Circle Game. "And the seasons, they go round and round, and the painted ponies go up and down. We're captive on a carousel of time. We can't return, we can only look behind from where we came and go round and round and round in the circle game."

by Guy Spiro

I've always liked that lyric for its truth and its poetry. All of life does flow in cycles. The seasons are the perfect example of how life and death circle around unceasingly. Everything in nature is born, matures, dies and is reborn in the next cycle. This is true from the smallest atom to the largest galaxy.

Observe your breath as it endlessly proceeds in and out, in and out. Witness the perennials in the garden as they continually die in the fall only to be reborn in the spring. Read of humanity's civilizations as they rise and fall only to rise and fall again. The Dalai Lama was once asked what he thought of the Big Bang. After a moment's reflection, he asked, "Which one?" It is a circle game. But more deeply, the circle can be seen to be a spiral and the spiral is moving up or down. Things are evolving or devolving. The question becomes, is your spiral traveling upwards or downwards.

As I write this, NATO is moving into Kosovo as the Serb military and police are moving out. After what has been done to the ethnic Albanian population, the Serbs who choose to remain do so at their great peril. The region clearly is and has been on a downward spiral for many generations. Somehow, someone has to stop the downward motion and send it back up - or the cycle of atrocity and revenge will continue until life itself becomes untenable.

As an example closer to home: three generations ago the family I was born into was a successful multi-generational family. Mild dysfunctionalism set in and I represent the third generation of dysfunction. It would have surprised no one if I had failed to create a family at all. But I made the choice to stop the downward spiral and send it back up again. Time will tell the result but I plan to sit one day at the head of a table with two or three healthy generations spread before me.

It is time for us all to examine the various spirals we're on. Work to preserve the upward spirals and choose to stop the downward. We live in a pivotal period, personally and globally, and the choices we make now may determine the course of events and quality of life for generations to come.

It is time to play the circle game consciously.

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