The Circle Game

Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star
Then the child moved ten times round the seasons
Skated over ten clear frozen streams
Words like “when you're older” must appease him
And promises of someday make his dreams

Time is elastic. When you are young it is very slow; ‘just a minute’ is intolerably long, ‘soon’ takes forever and ‘tomorrow’ may as well be an eternity away. Nothing can go fast enough. You wish you were older; with age comes privilege but also responsibility—and through a child’s eyes responsibility is a word which means doing what you’re told even when no one tells you to do it, restricted to discreet instances, bound to potential consequences and largely irrelevant. Few people can, at the age of six, recognize that growing up means shouldering more of the world; for you, growing up means a bigger piece of pie and a half hour more television.

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

The older you get, the more time stretches. Sometimes time passes quickly in leaps and bounds—all of the sudden months or years have passed—or excruciatingly slowly still. Normal speed is tolerable—you still wish you were older, you still want to be allowed to have sleepovers, stay out late, go out with friends, whatever—but you can tolerate normal time. The week stretches endlessly, the length proportional to the amount of homework required or the size of the Friday exam, and the weekend passes on winged feet. Summer can’t come soon enough and May drags on as if it were chained down and had to first fight itself free, and as soon as you know it is August again. Each coming year increases your allowance and decreases your bedtime. Your grades matter, your hairstyle and your clothes matter, and your young shoulders strain under the weight of other people’s expectations.

Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now
Cartwheels turn to car wheels through the town
And they tell him,
Take your time, it won't be long now
Till you drag your feet to slow the circles down

You learn to drive. You get a job. Some of you start to drink and smoke and do other things you’d rather not tell your parents about. You learn to juggle all of these things, with more or less success. Other people’s opinions of you become important, sometimes more important than your opinions of yourself, which only very few people have anyways. A pimple is a tragedy and you arrange your entire morning to have a ‘chance’ encounter with that one person whose flaws you have smoothed with your imagination and your conviction that this person is your special someone, regardless of the fact that you don’t know them, they don’t know you and you don’t ‘have a chance’. Your dreams far outstrip reality; you no longer want to be an astronaut or a fireman or a ballerina and the loss of these ideals is not always replaced by “better” ones. You’ll go to college, and to do this you take the right classes and make friends with the right teachers, you study for exams and standardized tests, you sign up for the right clubs, you increase your extracurricular activities and you consider whether debate or DECA looks better on your resume. Time accelerates.

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
There'll be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through

All of the sudden there is no more school. Your applications and essays pay off and you receive the thicker packet among the thinner “It’s nothing personal, but…”. You fit everything you own into a car or two and then half of a 12 x 12 room and try not to get swept away. Among four hundred other confused and bleary-eyed students, some hungover, some still drunk, many just confused, harried, scared, excited, you hunch in the back and squint at the powerpoint and the small lone figure pacing the stage with a gravelly wireless for company. You take notes, you sit exams, you join clubs, fraternities, sororities, and it all comes piling in in a frantic rush. Finals week becomes hell on earth, you sit five exams, work 20 hours, sleep five a night, study, stress, eat poorly, drink far too much coffee and in the end are so unbelievably happy to have survived that far that you don’t even care what grade you got. Time accelerates. Soon enough you’ll be finished, words like Senior Thesis, Graduation and Career Fair loom in on your consciousness. Perceived time is now faster than real time; in no time at all a week or two or five or fifty have passed and you fend off tomorrow with such of your youth as remains.

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return, we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

Somewhere amid the stress and the dreams “real life” begins; or rather, at some point you realize that it was there all along. The current carrying you is strong, powerful with the weight of tradition and expectations, yet you may still change it, swim to the other side or even climb out if you choose. You may drift and yet steer. You no longer yearn for the future or gaze longingly at the past, you simply are, you exist, you enjoy the moment you are in. Your perspective changes and you see something of the future though there are bends in the river beyond which you cannot see. If you are lucky you find someone with whom to drift along, or you prefer to be alone and resent when others ask you if you are “getting by” alone. Your expectations for yourself become more important than other people’s expectations for you, and it is shattering for the parents if the pedestal on which they have placed their little darling is more a painting of dreams than a mirror of reality. And this is your life; what will you make of it?