photo: kapungo

Back when Ronni and I knew everything, we'd sit around reflecting on our vast real-world experience. We were old and wise. I mean, seriously - we were legal. So after classes and our minimum-wage jobs wrapped up for the day, we'd take our 21 year-old selves to the bar to talk philosophy.

Sometimes we'd engage in healthy debate.

I argued, essentially, that we were currently living the renaissance of our lives. As we entered the workforce after graduation, our careers would give us increasingly specialized knowledge.

Splat.

What I was describing was a pyramid - like an upside down ice cream cone, Ronni thought. She wondered why I'd want to know less as I got older. She thought the cone should be the other way — biggest at the top after a lifetime of learning.

Hmmm...

We had a sip of cheap draft and went on to discuss other heady things like where to go for spring break and how it was better to date a guitarist than a drummer.

Like I said. We knew everything.

Now I believe — read: I don't know, but I think — we were both wrong about the geometry of knowledge. It's not a cone at all. It's a spiral. Have you noticed this too, or is it just me? Time may march in one direction, but progression through life seems to go in circles.

I don't know how many times I've been surprised to realize I'd "come full-circle" on something since the day I was so sure the shape of things to come was like a cone.  I chalk it up to irony when things in the past on life's time line somehow come around again.

Nature goes in circles, you know. Tides, seasons, sunrises and sunsets... they all come and go in predictable cycles. I don't know what that has to do with the shape of time and progress, but it's somehow comforting to know I'm in good company.

Now that I'm older and sure of less than I was at age 21, I laugh at those conversations back then. Not about which way the proverbial cone is facing — that's so abstract it sounds wise. But our vacation choices and thoughts on men? At least now, on those topics, we are wise, and that's what I call progress.