Embracing the Spiral: How Life’s Repeating Cycles Bring New Perspectives and Wisdom
For the past few months, I’ve asked myself a question that typically churns my insides:
Have I just been running around in circles all of these years?
I’ve changed jobs and industries multiple times. I’ve initiated projects, made writing plans and goals, visualized yoga studios, penned travel itineraries, even looked up how much it would cost me to live in a van and bum my way through North America. For someone who hates moving, I’ve moved countless apartments; changed states and overhauled my entire life — on several occasions — thinking that new roots were better over there somewhere.
In these past few months, a thought has resurfaced that often sucks the creative life force from my body: I’ve been wasting time! Time I could have used to buy a house; stick to one path; get married; have kids; save money to put into a savings account. Instead, I’ve been jumping from one idea to the next; one continent to the next; and now I’m 36, tired, alone, in school again, and unsure of any significant value that I’ve contributed to my life or outside of it.
If you know this internal dialogue space, you also know that it can get dark quite fast. There’s no motivation in that space; no light at the end of the tunnel. And so I’ve been burning my candle at both ends at the thought of this question that just would not let go of me. Until yesterday.
Sunday. August 18th. El Segundo beach in Los Angeles, up the hill on the little spot with grass, where you can sit and catch the sunset. I sat with my journal, but not to vent. Another invitation appeared:
Write all that you’ve ever done in your life. Make a list
I hesitatingly began writing, a part of me already stressed that I would forget something. But as I began to list everything out, my memories highlighted the most important events. The memorable ones, good and bad, alike.
- Learned a second language
- Joined Art class, skipped, made some cool drawings, decided to pursue Art in college (never did)
- Made it onto the Editorial team at UD!
- Fell in love with the boy next door
- Moved to a new state, hated my parents for a little while
- Broke up with boy next door
- Met someone else, lost myself
- Found yoga that changed my life
A pattern soon began to appear. It took me a while to see it; but I’d like to thank the perfect stranger who pulled his bike over next to me to have a smoke. Saying nothing the entire time, he turned to me before he departed and asked: Do you feel the deja vu? Perplexed, I looked back at him and shook my head; and as he turned to leave, he said: Think about it — and pointed back to my journal.
I continued my list:
- Started blogging
- Published my first piece on Elite Daily, so many comments! *goosebumps*
- Moved out to my first apartment
- Feeling miserable and lonely, no idea how to live alone
- Trying to find myself again
- Joined a trip to Nepal that changed my life
And the pattern continued:
- Adopted my cats!
- Moved to another apartment again, hated it
- Took a risk during COVID, moved to Chicago!
- Got the call that my dad died, lost myself entirely
- Moved back home, got into grad school that would change my life
Do you see it, too?
Something lost and something gained, over and over again — for decades. I suppose the bike stranger was right: there was deja vu. And I suppose my initial fearful thought was also right: I have been running around in circles all of these years. But not just any circle — more of a spiral. This is a concept that one of my dear teachers brought up recently; the idea that life is hardly ever linear, but just the same, also hardly ever a closed circle. Instead, we can liken the progression of life to a spiral. With each experience and lesson in the making, we circle back to old patterns, painpoints, and blockages; but this time, we’re wiser, older, and come with even more stories and perspective. We come with new eyes.
I write this post today because I know there are plenty of us out there: the ones who don’t always know where they’re going or why; or how to accurately verbalize all that stirs within them. The world often demands of us to fall in line and pick a path — one, preferrably. And the world also stands as judge and juror, forcing us to hand over evidence of what we’ve collected in life to prove our worth. Sometimes I don’t think my journals or words suffice as evidence; but I’d like to keep fighting against that thought.
There are spaces in this world for you to experience the full breadth of life, in whatever way you choose. For me, it arrived through a random journaling prompt and a serious life inventory that smacked me in the face. I’m grateful for it. It shows me not only the peaks and valleys of my life, but how every breakdown made way for a breakthrough.
Through every challenge, I’ve done something to find myself again and reconnect. I might have lost time, money, friends, opportunities. But I never let myself lose me.
I hope you take the time to seek this pattern in your own life, too. It’s worth every spin of the spiral.
xoxo
