Cycle

I was reading Hesse's Siddhartha in class yesterday, and something in the book made me think about our approaches to life.

This was during their stay with the samanas, basically a group of wandering ascetics who seeked to allow one's inner self to shine through by denying one's own physical body. Siddhartha noticed that the eldest of the samanas was about sixty or so, and after about three years he felt little closer to letting his inner self shine through then when he was born as a child. He wondered if he was going in circles; and to this his friend Govinda replied, "The circle is a spiral. We have already ascended several levels."

As we go through courses of education, and our daily lives, we go through many cycles. The cycle of the academic year, the cycle of the circadian physiological rhythm, possibly even the cycle of happiness and despair, regret and realisation, et cetera.

Are we merely going in circles?

Admittedly, I fear that.
jk