The Circle of Life

"There's far too much to take in here, more to find than can ever be found. But the sun rolling high through the sapphire sky, keeps great and small on the endless round in the circle of life, It's the wheel of fortune, it's a leap of faith, it's the band of hope.Till we find our place on the path unwinding in the circle, the Circle of Life" ….Lyrics by Tim Rice/ Melody by Elton John.

The circle of life refers to birth, life, reproduction and death. As all animal and vegetable life follow this pattern already established, it falls to the intelligent few and the powerful to secure and improve the process in a dependable way, if they can. Truer words have never been spoken in that "there is too much to take in here, more to find than can ever be found," and while we are on this subject, are we even aware that the taking and the finding are issues in themselves, separate and apart from the theme of the Lion King?

We live a life sired by the typical biologic methods and continue on in the charge of family and society to field our paths of development. Our growth is carefully guided and constantly admired with a plethora of smiles and praise while we take our turn through the beginning times. In most cases the enriching elements discovered and available, combined with the tested ways of the ages result in a healthy and happy plant or animal. How is it possible then, with the help of so much support, technology and time tested nurturing, that so many of us in the animal category go astray to dismal unhappiness and poor health before the natural order of things, and before "finding our place on the path unwinding in the circle?" Is that circle really just a wheel of fortune, a leap of faith or a band of hope? Before we condemn Tim Rice's lyrics to the circular file beneath our desk, it is worthy to distinguish unhappiness and poor health self-imposed rather than societally ordained. A child born with a degenerative disease will not, save for any number of potential medical discoveries, secure good health as we would promote given the opportunity. An adult traumatized by an accident may lead him to a life of seizures, neurologic devastation and the like. But these examples are, as yet, still not completely controllable by humans, and so the family and society steps in to provide the continued aid required to lighten the load and life goes on. In reference to the above lyrics, this would refer to what I am assuming would be the "wheel of fortune," and we then would not to be blamed that medical science has not achieved the results to reverse the misfortunes in this category.

What about the child left to fend for himself without guidance and caring, who grows to be an angry adult - lonely, malnourished and under-educated, unable to make his way through life with a job, self-respect and any dignity from his peers in the more preferred venues. Does he join a gang, or just file for disability at 21 with a life-controlling depressive disorder. How about the youngster who is raised by a very busy pair of well-educated parents, taught the 5 basic food groups in school, but continues to eat junk unsupervised at the fast food drive-through, and develops hypertension and a heart condition in his 30s. Let's not leave out the youths among us who grew perfectly strong, intellectually savvy, mentally healthy and then went off to a "most important war" only to return to their new home in a cemetery. What is this all about? Why are these very cherished children left dead or maimed by the side of the road in a "leep of faith," while the rest of us carry on in the circle of life? Why is anyone spared and anyone saved and where does the imbecilic appetite come from to promote the pitfalls that would persist in embracing these subsets in continuum.

In a recent conversation, I listened to someone rip apart capitalism, as he felt the profiteers in our culture were responsible for so many losses in every category listed above, being left behind or pushed ahead to an early demise. However, there is also a reasonable argument regarding the citizens of North Korea, a noncapitalistic society, who can barely grasp the concepts of capitalism except that it is "bad" per their Dear Leader, as they too are dying of malnutrition, are poorly provided for and live a war-caliber existence, picking and scrounging simply to survive.

Does it really come down to the contest between good and evil that our circle of life continues to swell and retract with dependable regularity and sometimes strangles the frail or even the healthy who would roll over a previously unidentified land mine at the wrong time? How it baffles the educated mind to solve the puzzle of why the great civilizations that walked the earth became "no more," abandoning it all with nothing to show but some ruins, a few Roman coins here and there and a helmet or two stuck in the sand for an archeologist retrieval. Ancient Greece just disappeared; the Mayan civilization just disappeared. Temples and terraces remain but the elite civilizations we admired are gone. In the interest of respecting the phrase, "history repeats itself," has anyone considered that at some point, in spite of our greatness and advanced technology, we too might just disappear like a Mayan, specifically because of our own ineptness to grapple with the same weapons that have hindered humanity through the centuries - lack of suitable nutrition, security of one's space and self-abuse?

Why is it just outside the reach of humanity to consider its options now when so much is again at stake in the history of human development? Why do not enough people consider the abuse their bodies absorb by the self-imposed, self-destructive choices and behaviors we perform with generous regularity, (drugs, alcohol, artery clogging nutrition, lack of protection against disease?) Why is it that the concept of war and killing by street gangs and national armies alike is not the furthest thing from an educated consciousness as we contemplate our own security by keeping a gun in the house for protection, and watching CNN to see how Iran and Israel are doing tonight? With no disrespect intended to our fallen youth who are trying beyond hope with poor equipment in the line of battle, what good was served in the peace that came from the killing of the the "young men and women in uniform who gave their lives for freedom?" Those people died because they felt they were doing the right thing in protecting our nation against invasion and attack, but what I want to know is why either side of a conflict still thinks in terms of killing to delete invasion and attack and to secure a sovereign peace or a world peace? Is this the best we have been able to achieve as inhabitants of Earth, if we are still thinking in terms of behaving like Roman warriors from 2000 years ago, but now with planes? The circle of life .. give me a break!

What chance is there that the current circle of life will survive at all past the ongoing threat of atomic weapons in the hands of self-absorbed rogue nations, and past the intense nightly gang wars where little children are killed sleeping in their beds from a stray bullet, and high school scholars are shot dead in the streets of Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. while walking home from school? Unequal to all this, but still worthy of mention, are the triple cheese burgers in the mouths of our adolescents on their way to triple bypass in adulthood and other debilitating vascular dilemmas? Now, there is a combination of curiosity, and yet representing all things that we should be able to adjust because of our exposure to a fine education (another problem not to be covered here.) Why are these phenomena still running ramped in a civilization of high intellect? Why do we put all the straightening-out responsibilities on the heads of the spiritual world we pray to for resolution? It occurs to me that when the metal meets the concrete, we really are not capable of more than scientific discovery in a lab and the ability to dig up fossils is a meadow; being able to do anything to resolve our plight based on discoveries made, falls far below our ability to identify and control the risks these discoveries could have eradicated.

Maybe as soccer came up the generations from the time of the 70s until today, now taking it's place among our other national pastimes in this country, our best hope might be to continue to push the concepts of "circle of life" in animated movies for kids. A few generations from now today's youth may become so engrained in respecting life, manifested by these mere suggestions, that the answers to these serious questions will be easily recognized. How amusing is our concern about handing along an unfair national debt tomorrow, when our blatant disregard of the obvious and the injurious has yet to be addressed. I wonder what order the unwinding path will take in the circle of life, assuming that the circle persists against the challenge of overcoming our inability to merge knowledge with action.

Alice Elizabeth Cagle July 22, 2010