On timelessness & week 43 of 52

We have this body for a finite time, and our words will be forgotten, but what lives on?

Timeless: not restricted to a particular time or date (Merriam-Webster)

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.

—William Stafford

I celebrated my sister’s birthday in a hibachi restaurant in Chillicothe, Ohio. We were sitting at a table in the middle of the room, and we were pretty loud as we reflected on the state of the world and the pain many were feeling, including us. We settled on the idea that the pendulum must swing.

After a brief silence, to close out the conversation, my sister said, “Time is just a flat circle.”

I didn’t have an immediate reference point for what she meant, though I thought I intuitively got it. I spun a noodle around my fork and wondered how many times I had done just that.

Upon researching my sister’s words, I came across Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence theory that states everything is always repeating to infinity.

As humans, we seem designed to replicate and alter, replicate and alter. But ultimately, we replicate. This, in a sense, speaks to the timelessness of our experience.

There are patterns that surface and resurface across culture, literature, science, religion and passing observation. The world freezes, the world melts. There are fashion trends that endure (my sister was a fashion/retail studies major) and those that fade away.

In 2025, we might see the same sentiment shared by two people on different social media platforms, with almost indistinguishable differences—a common and shared thought seen through two different lenses. Researchers make simultaneous breakthroughs (known as multiple discovery) while occupying different parts of the world. We share, rework, reimagine, and preserve existing ideas and stories—for better and worse.

There are story structures that show up in parallel to others across cultures and eras, as studied by Jung, Joseph Campbell, and Carol Pearson. When archetypes show up in slightly different forms, the familiarity brings us comfort. We think we might have an idea of how a story will end.

What is timeless in our personal, ephemeral, creative experience of life?

Perhaps it’s what repeats, what endures longer comparatively, or what was never different in the first place. Perhaps the “now” is timeless.

It’s a question worth pondering as part of our 52-week experiment, so this brings me to our prompt.

Meditate on these questions:

• What is timeless in you?

• What is timeless to you?

Writing prompt: Explore the idea that time is, in fact, a flat circle. It’s endlessly repeating the same events. You can explore the concept critically, place it in a fictional conversation (perhaps two characters debating the idea), or use it as a catalyst for a poem.

“The timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness. And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream.” ― Khalil Gibran

Your observations …