One can read in Ecclesiastes:
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
(…) A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
(…) A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
This vision of life as a cycle can be distorting and wrong. There are many other views in which life doesn’t spread out as a cycle but as one damn thing after another, or as an erratic snake, or as the coloured joy of a bird in spring.
But there is in fact a certain angle where life and its elements show up to us in a circular way, where love and war follow on from each other with regularity along time. There is a view in which the Ecclesiastes author is right.
Think of our everyday life, and its wars: the work war, the survival war. Isn’t there, in the interval of our daily wars, a space – perhaps brief, too brief – for a smile, for a calm conversation, for a kiss? There is indeed always an hour, a minute, to love. There is a cycle of war and love in our lives. And Ecclesiastes is right, in this view.
Even those responsible for wars, in the strict sense of the word, aren’t excluded from this cycle. Even those whose hands are dirty with blood – as the Nazis – need a space for loving their children, their spouses, their lovers (yet it may be considered as wretched and insignificant in face of the space dedicated to war and hate).
We all are involved in these cycles. In fact, what varies within the repeating cycles of our lives is the duration of the spaces they contain. In the better of us the space for the superior or for the good acts may be bigger. But in them there is also a large space for repetitive daily things, and for the evil present in the roots of every being. And that’s another perspective of seeing human’s lives as cycles.
But there is in fact a certain angle where life and its elements show up to us in a circular way, where love and war follow on from each other with regularity along time. There is a view in which the Ecclesiastes author is right.
Think of our everyday life, and its wars: the work war, the survival war. Isn’t there, in the interval of our daily wars, a space – perhaps brief, too brief – for a smile, for a calm conversation, for a kiss? There is indeed always an hour, a minute, to love. There is a cycle of war and love in our lives. And Ecclesiastes is right, in this view.
Even those responsible for wars, in the strict sense of the word, aren’t excluded from this cycle. Even those whose hands are dirty with blood – as the Nazis – need a space for loving their children, their spouses, their lovers (yet it may be considered as wretched and insignificant in face of the space dedicated to war and hate).
We all are involved in these cycles. In fact, what varies within the repeating cycles of our lives is the duration of the spaces they contain. In the better of us the space for the superior or for the good acts may be bigger. But in them there is also a large space for repetitive daily things, and for the evil present in the roots of every being. And that’s another perspective of seeing human’s lives as cycles.
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