Psychologists and writers have posed the question: Why do we keep having such high expectations in life?. “Who ever promised you a rose garden?” Who promised us better, and when? Why do we feel the emotion of betrayal when yet another hero, or lover, reveals his feet of clay, yet another dream of a better world fails?
I think the soul remembers and longs for that place on earth...that Garden of Eden. The soul longs, and it is only with this longing, this sense of what should be, that we have moved out of an age when we chained the retarded in dungeons, put heads on stakes outside the palace...to something like the Geneva Convention, Child Aid, and other, more human practices. With all the evil that remains on earth, don’t tell me the world is not a better place than it has been.
Perhaps it requires the enthusiastic vigor of youth – that ability to believe – that makes any forward step at all. But we need dreamers to coalesce our faith or longing around – to make us believe that now...NOW it will be possible, despite all the failures of the past. That these dreamers develop feet of clay, or finally show them, is inevitable, it seems. It’s an enormous job, after all. That believers suffer crises of faith (whether in political movements or religious—and many writers have pointed out the similarities between these) and lose the movement is also inevitable. Or they don’t leave but carry on only to become more and more worn down—I’ve seen the tired eyes, greying skin, lank hair.
But their flame kindles the belief, provides the model, for others. Each of us who tries may give only a drop in the bucket, but slowly the bucket fills.
The forces that hold on to the status quo interest me; those who fear risking the status quo for what is perceived as chaos, license, the dark energy. So perhaps that is the dichotomy: blind love, enthusiastic faith, or fear. It would seem that fear is always the stronger force; yet many have posited that there are only two choices, fear and love. And they say love conquers all.
Astrologically it is Saturn and Uranus always in a dance—surging forward, holding back; one in prominence, then the other. The two were in direct opposition in the mid-60s, and are again now. Saturn digs in its heels to hold back “excesses.” And so it should be. Uranus can’t surge ahead in one unending line; this would leave the majority behind. It must be slow step by faithful step, being energized by the new, the hopeful; learning from the old, the cautious. That balance, that dance of life.
