
The tower in the middle of Copenhagen has this incredible roadway spiralling upwards. It allowed horses and carriages to ascend to the rooms above. I think it’s the only tower I ever climbed which had a road inside it!
As you ascend you see all around the city through the windows, passing 360 degrees again and again, each time at a different level, so at each window, even if it affords you a view in a direction you’ve already looked, what you see will be different.
I think this is a great physical, active metaphor for Life. We often seem to revisit the same issues or to experience the same problem again. It can feel like we are making no progress, that we are going round in circles. But, in fact, we don’t go round in circles and we never have the exact same experience twice. Rather we follow spirals, each time coming round again to a similar issue or problem, but because both we and the world we live in continuously change, every encounter is actually very different – even when, at first, it seems the same.
The cycles of life are less like circles, more like spirals. And we should be careful not to snooze too deeply into familiarity, because nothing truly repeats itself exactly.
Zombies might walk in circles, but we humans ascend in spirals.
Leave a Reply