Jim Murray

5 years ago · 2 min. reading time · 0 ·

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The Circle Game

The Circle Game

314d1b75.jpgI was watching Springsteen on Broadway last night, (Neflix) which is a pretty incredible one-man sort of show in which he goes through his whole life in story and songs.

I really loved this for a couple of reasons. One is that his life story is really interesting. And kind of a walkabout that brought him right back to the place where he was actually from.

I saw the parallels there, between his life and mine. Not that I am a rich rock and roll songwriter, performer and legend. But that I left the place where I was raised, the Niagara Peninsula, at the age of 18 and now, more that fifty years later, I find myself right back here and happy about the decision to return.

The second reason was that Bruce’s story got me thinking about my own. And for some strange reason I woke up this morning with this strange a-ha insight.

Getting To Sleep

For most of my adult life, I have always slept well. The big issue I have always had had more to do with the rhythms of the sleep/wake cycle.

This morning, in the few moments of clarity you get before the day starts crowding in on you, it occurred to me, in a kind of blinding flash of insight, that the days when I wake up feeling like I could really kick some ass, are the days when when, for whatever reason, I got in sync with my natural sleep/wake rhythm

In this insight I realized that I would always have trouble getting to sleep because I simply was not in this rhythm. I was either going to bed too early or too late. Or I wasn’t writing for a couple hours before going to bed to divest myself of the considerable angst that builds up with each day and the bullshit the world throws at you. And we all know how much of that there is to deal with these days.

But this morning it all became clear. It wasn’t so much that I was a slave to these rhythms, but that I had somehow chosen them early on and then had them altered by all the responsibilities of having a career as an advertising professional, raising a family, doing a ton of freelance and hobby writing and all the other stuff of life.

And now that those responsibilities have lessened, I realized that my body and mind were telling me that it’s time to go back, as much as possible, to those original rhythms, and that I will be happier and more productive that way.

44d5fe20.jpgHence the title of this post.

I don’t know if any of you feel the same way about this as I do. Things like this are very personal. So I am just happy that I was able to stumble across this insight. Because, for me at least, it feels like the last hurdle I had to jump in this new phase of my existence back home again.

Hopefully, it will give me back a lot of the energy I felt I was losing which, in turn, will make me more productive and allow me to keep on doing the things I love to do for longer.

Thanks, Bruce....I needed that.

jim out

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Comments

John Rylance

5 years ago #5

The circle of life is a powerful image. Both as life cycles as in the insect world that continue cyclically, or as in humans from birth to death. This can be more that just the enter and leave the world with nothing.  This became clear to me when preparing what I was going to say at my mother's funeral. When thinking of my memories I realised, among my first memories were of looking out of our windows at the clock on a tower of the nearby Hospital, and among my last memories was that of looking out of the window of of the same hospital at the same clock just before she died.  The two memories were other 60 years apart.For me it made a poignant ending to a full life.

Pascal Derrien

5 years ago #4

The Rhythm of life by Jim &... Bruce :-) Class

Paul Walters

5 years ago #3

Jim Murray Cant say really, I'm too slothful

Jerry Fletcher

5 years ago #2

Jim, I know exactly what you mean. My natural rhythm got fluxxed by illness and surgeons carving on me. It has taken years to get close to where it once was and I find myself once again at long last becoming a night owl again. I handle the business stuff in the morning pretty well when I don't use an alarm and wake up naturally these days. Evenings are for the more personal things. Your photo reminds me of how my ex-wife described me one morning. She said, "You look like a startled rooster!" And so it goes

CityVP Manjit

5 years ago #1

What drew me to this buzz was the oval mosaic, it is a thoroughly mesmerizing composition and because I don't remember a buzz by you that leads with this kind of image, so I was intrigued by the combined novelty. I do think we take the rhythm of life for granted, mainly because of occupation - which for me is a word that denotes what our mind is occupied with rather than the job that occupies our mind.

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