Turn, Turn, Turn

Most of us have a keen sense of the "present" and it's surroundings. We are programmed or taught to respond to the needs of the moment. In the present, we make adjustments in order to reach some predetermined goal or recall some unpleasant experience to avoid impending disaster.

We (anointed "leaders" excluded herein- their blinders a spoil of rank, so it seems) are also innately geared to grow stuff, the default setting for survival. The present in its full context (modern physics aside here, please) is a bridge from the past to the future. Without this sufficient (but not always necessary) structure for reasoning we are on a treadmill, not a path, with history too often repeated, progress stifled, and a pace toward entropy ramped.

the circle

We also have the mental tools to soften the rough edges of history, to help maintain our heading toward the future and progress. We acknowledge that growth and decline is the essence of life. It also gives it value and meaning.

Every season, every idea, every mark is infused with and defined by ineluctable movement. In some cases that movement, if drawn as a line, may well follow a "straight" course, a beginning to an end. Or it may return to meet itself in the gentlest way realizing the archetypical circle, the best of possibilities. Unfortunately, in the long run, the latter is hostage to the former.

The notion of a team- a complimentary, non-hierarchical concept is the most efficient, healthy path to growth. A team, however, is the most difficult model to "manage" as each member must choose a time to lead, a time to follow, a time to teach, a time to learn. It requires that the whole be greater than the parts, with each part remaining essential to the whole. It has many leaders, not one.

In our given time, we can at best hope to describe and move in a line that returns to itself, creating a shape that is a whole; a space that has a center. And though the edges of that shape may not always be fair, the space within is forever defined.