I’d like to think I’m growing in maturity. And one of the life lessons I’ve been dealing with lately is the cyclical nature of life. Oh, you best…this post is about to get super philosophical and mystical. But follow me, if you will.
I’ve been playing the stock market. It’s playing because I only have a small amount of money invested. It’s enough that it hurts when I lose and feels good when I win. One of my recent stock purchases plummeted. I bought in at $170, it dropped to $140 in two days. That freaked me out. “What if it keeps dropping to zero? All my money will be gone!”
I was tempted to cut my losses and sell. But I remembered this new concept I’ve been learning: the cyclical nature of life. Life repeats itself. Events repeat themselves. The stock would come back up eventually. I just needed to ride out the cycle.
But the cyclical nature of life applies to more than just stock portfolios. It applies to tests. It applies to friendships. It applies to good times and bad times.
Your life has its own seasons. And you’ll forever rotate through them until you die.
For most people, this presents a challenge. They spend their time trying to get used to their current season.
“The weather is changing. It’s getting hot. I better start finding some warm weather clothing to wear.” So they scramble to figure out life within that season. But by the time they’re finally getting a handle on it, the season changes. Now it’s fall. So they scramble to figure out fall. These people forget that life is a cycle. You can pretty much predict that what happened in the past will happen again.
But what if you had the perspective to realize that you can prepare for those seasons ahead of time. What if you look in your past, and learn from your mistakes? What if you prepare for the opportunities and troubles from the past, that you know will come around again? What if you were proactive in your cyclical life?
I’m still trying to figure out exactly what that looks like to be proactive. But the side effect of thinking like this is that I don’t freak out if I miss an opportunity. I don’t freak out if I make a mistake. I simply learn from my seasons and make a mental note for when that season arrives again.
The seasons will change. The weather will rise and fall. The landscape will change. But you can prepare yourself and enjoy the changes.
