Cyclical Rant

Life is a series of cycles that ebb and flow, or pendulate between the states of comfort and discord; alignment and dissonance. Biorhythms claim to measure our physical, emotional and intellectual cycles, and I don’t doubt that they do, but life offers so many more complexities and influences of different duration. Biorhythms sing to a somewhat monthly tune. But what about my coffee cycle? Right now I’ve enjoyed a good cup of coffee each morning for the last four months, but I was in a lull for months before that.

The seasons affect me cyclically, which also impacts my state of well being. My attachment to others ebbs and flows. My needs of fitness and rest. My need for savory vs. salt. My need to drum; my need for new music; my need for retail therapy.

These all have different cycles that dance to a different set of variables. Assuming that therapy and self work will never result in a steady state of being – perhaps that’s the antithesis of being alive – then my life will continue to respond to a series of cycles where every once in a while all things are trending up, and there will be attendant days where trends are moving down. I’ve experienced both, and I suppose the goal is to make the transition as gracefully as possible.

(The problem for me is that often those days of maximum height are quickly followed by the common cold. Sometimes when I feel on top of everything my body is firing on all cylinders trying to kill of some invasion. I need to remember that.)

So what’s the take-away? Appreciate the days when we are high, and be patient when we are not. But that’s not why I wrote this. These musings are based on the one cycle that I have the greatest difficulty with – the election cycle.

This is a time when the media circus unfurls its biggest tent to proclaim in both tacit and grand terms that the most important thing our nation faces is the selection of a new set of leaders. I’ve seen enough cycles of years to report that this is not true. That this is a show. A chimera that we are a democracy.

The issues this nation faces are beyond the scope and power of our supposed leaders. We as a nation need to turn inward if we’re ever to pull ourselves out of this mess, and the systematic dumbing-down of our nation’s discourse (and thus, citizens) will probably preclude such an outcome.

I could fill a bucket of blogs voicing my discontent with the way our system works, and this feeling I have is brought about because the level of noise and lies paraded in the media. I look forward to the end of this cycle. Then, we can go back to our villages and pretend the monster is dead. We can turn our attention to the pockets of light and hope that persist in the culture, in our towns and neighborhoods, that are more truthful and effective than any fabricated great hope.

My problem is that we seemed to have reached what amounts to an almost perpetual election cycle. Faced with that I just don’t know how I’m going to balance it out. If the way to ameliorate the effects of a strong negative cycle is to entertain an equally strong positive cycle, then I need to find the antidote to politics. What is that? Turning off the news. Gee, I hate not knowing, but perhaps that’s the best way. Then I can stop encountering the frustrating positionings and lies, and I can once again focus on what really matters. My family, the weather, the promise of bulbs I planted last fall, my coffee.

Maybe the antidote to politics is art; the brave act of creation that results in tangible changes to the world, almost always for its betterment.