Читать книгу The Great Reduction - Jay Trott - Страница 14

More on the theme of the perpetual return.

Old people are tired. They do not have rest from the pleasures of seeing and hearing, but they may be tired of those pleasures. They do not have rest from their labors, the rest they were seeking all along, but they are tired of their labors and cannot go on.

This puts them in a strange predicament. They continue to be restless, but their weariness now stands in the way of contentment. The only way to make this clear is to make their weariness clear; which is just what Solomon is going to do, at some length.

First, the thing that has been is what shall be. Or as he will say later, there is nothing new under the sun. You are blissfully unaware of this when you are young because, well, you are young. You have not lived long enough to see the perpetual return.

The passion of the moment is what governs youth. We think we are Changing Things, and this energizes our labors. But the older we get, the more conscious we become that things never really change. Yesterday’s big initiative is replaced with tomorrow’s big initiative—and in that sense they are the same.

Think of the professional baseball team. There are certain things they must do in order to win the World Series. But once they have won one, those things do not change. They still have to do them in order to win. And twenty years later they have to do them all over again.

Or think of the brave young DA who has come to town to clean up things and put an end to corruption. If she is a very energetic young woman, she may succeed in cleaning up some things, but she will never put an end to corruption. There will be many DAs after her following the same path to glory.

This is the perpetual return. While we are engaged in our labors we do not see their repetitive nature. We think we are accomplishing something great, something new. But when we grow a little older and see other people doing the same things, we realize that history has a repetitive quality.

The thing is done over and over again and nothing really changes. Success does not give us what we are looking for. It does not bring happiness or closure. This is why the thing itself—the effort, the great initiative—has become wearisome to Solomon in his old age.