"Some things that happen for the first time Seem to be happening again" You may remember Harry Connick, Jr. singing these words in "When Harry Met Sally." "It seems we stood and talked like this before...We looked at each other in the same way then...But I can't remember where or when...Some things that happen for the first time Seem to be happening again...And so it seems that we have met before And laughed before and loved before But who knows where or when"
The Writer of Ecclesiastes points out that life is seasonal, cyclical. "For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven." Life recycles. Night and day. The seven day week. Spring, summer, fall, winter. We've been there before, and God willing, we will be there again. And so it seems, we have another chance at many things as time goes by.
2 comments:
This is most certainly true.
My therapist says that life is sort of a spiral, rather than a straight line - and that you keep returning to certain things instead of moving away from them like you were driving in a car. She had a better way of saying that really made sense to me at the time.
Some of how we feel about time is manufactured by the retail industry. The day after Halloween is the begining of retail Christmas, and the day that the Christmas decorations go up in Meier and Frank. We sort of speed by Thanksgiving because no one has figured out a way to market it successfully. Except for the grocery store of course - they have plenty of Turkeys on hand. But essentially Thanksgiving is the First Day of Christmas. Then there is all of the Christmas build up. The strangest part of it to me is that the day after Christmas is very - "okay Christmas is OVER. No more music, no more egg nog... we'll let you keep up your decorations until New Years but not one more day after. Stop having fun at get back to work."
All the store shelves are now filled with Valentine's Day stuff - which will quickly be cleared away and replaced with Easter stuff on February 15th. Each year they keep moving up the retail calendar a couple of days. I can easily see a time when stores have Chritmas decorations up and Christmas music playing the day after Labor Day.
Easter is on March 27th this year, by the way. The day after my 35th birthday.
You're right about sales. I imagine production in Chinese factories has a six month lead on our the events in our calendar. Then too, the public school system organizes life for most Americans. Teachers plan around the school year calendar. When one season is done they just put away the seasonal material, knowing they can use it again next year. And of course, there is the Church Year. It can be a double edged sword. We can feel obligated to celebrate an event we don't really care about. But we can also say, at least to ourselves, "this too shall pass."
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