The Wheel of Fortune

Within living memory, schoolchildren drilled in anticipation of nuclear attack. Nowadays, it's active shooter drills. Threat specters shape shift; the only constant is the illusion of change.

Danger and threat have always been a presence in human life. Our home Gaia simply living her life has moments we call flood, drought, earthquake, wild fire, blizzard, sandstorm, plagues. Invaders and marauders, mostly of the human type, used to arrive on horseback or longships. Now they steal in through the ephemeral e-realm and invisible waves, unapparent in the micro or macro spheres.

Through time, many have commented on the “history repeats itself” phenomenon, and linked it to the human condition. For the most part, these remarks are expressed through a lens of the cost of human shortsightedness. I quite enjoy Canadian author Ronald Wright's take: “Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up.”
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But what if this repeating capacity is clarified through rose colored glasses, and not in a pejorative way? Where do we recognize the promise and reward resonances? How do we send them into the future? 

It's no surprise the Wheel of Fortune card is number 10. Ten often signifies completion - we have 10 fingers after all. A complete set. The Wheel continually revolves, eventually arriving at a completed circuit and ready to begin the next round. And as the wheel turns, so fortunes and life experiences proceed, up and down, round and round, coming back again to a familiar spot. Familiar, but not the same. How could we be the same after the intervening ride?

                             Bring your hard-won wisdom of the past 10 years to bear as we enter 2025 and clean your lenses!