Circles

Checking in over at Terrific Whistlers, I read the Emerson passage that Christopher Lydon quoted in his farewell address. The passage struck me, so here it is:

"Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit. No love can be bound by oath or covenant to secure it against a higher love. No truth so sublime but it may be trivial to-morrow in the light of new thoughts. People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.”

I can certainly understand what he's getting at, but I can't agree completely. True, it's that energizing spirit that keeps us pushing to see what lies ahead tomorrow. The great excitement of change may be fundamental, but the great serenity of the known is what makes us distinctly human. I know without a doubt that there are some firm truths; reliable points of knowledge that buoy us aloft in the surging waves forward.