The Wheel of Life that is. It turns on its axis regardless of what we, mere humans, do. Of course the largest of all “wheels” are the galaxies – unbelievably large “wheels” with billions of stars rotating majestically in, shall I say, their preordained manner.
Always there are patterns, events, all manner of things seem to return to what was there before (or almost). Even the entire universe, it seems, will one day cease expanding and start contracting – presumably back to what it was before – nothing!
Where tides always ebb as they must flow; where the seasons change as they have always done; where day always succeeds night; when a salmon must always return to the same river in which it was born, to spawn - these are in their own way rotating wheels of similar events.
Of course to us humans Life and Death is the most important “wheel” of all. Where a child is born or a man lies dead, Life continues. This is portrayed so well by Shakespeare in “As you like it” (Act II Scene VII):-
Lord Jaques:-
“All the world’s a stage,
And all men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in his nurse’s arms.
And then the whining school boy, with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like a pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloons,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
A second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”
So there it is. Wheels within wheels – not like clockwork – far above anything so mechanical. People and things must always obey the rules and regulations by which they were created.
It cannot be otherwise.
