How Life is Like a Pendulum
The pendulum swing is a good model for how humans hone in on truth and correct action as individuals and as a species.
If a pendulum is pulled back and let go of, it swings past center, then comes back past center to just short of its letting-go point, back and forth, with smaller movements every pass until it finally rests on center.
Humans often aim for a goal, miss, over-correct, then keep aiming and keep missing in different directions, yet missing by less and less until they finally get to the goal.
Give a person a baseball and a bullseye target and ask them to hit the center. If they throw too high the first time, they almost invariable throw too low the second time. Conversely, if they throw too low the first time, their second shot will probably go high.
This tendency to pendulum swing when honing in on truth can be seen on a grand scale. When there is backlash to any movement, that is part of the pendulum swing. Sometimes the pendulum swing might take place over decades, or even centuries, so it might not be readily apparent to an individual human. For example, slowly, slowly, we are swinging away from patriarchy and a male-dominated culture; I personally suspect that the last few thousand years of patriarchy were a pendulum-swing away from thousands of years of matriarchy and female-dominated culture before that.
Knowing about the pendulum swing helps me to be patient with humans as a species and as individuals. As a species, we are constantly integrating new truths and new technologies; it makes sense that figuring out the optimum way for humans to interact is still being perfected as our circumstances change.
As individuals, we are also figuring stuff out. I had a friend who, for awhile, was very abrupt, perceived by some as rude and abrasive, when she would say ‘no’ to people. There were those who were put off by this. I explained to them that her whole adult life, she had been very accommodating to people, saying ‘yes’ whenever she could, even when it wasn’t really what was in her highest and best good. She had finally figured out that she wanted to change; sure enough, she pendulum swung from being too accommodating to being too abrupt, because she wasn’t very adept at saying ‘no’ yet. Knowing that she was just at a certain point in her journey to learning optimum communication, rather than being rudely abrupt on purpose, helped me feel compassion and patience for her because I didn’t have to take her somewhat socially unskillful ‘no’s personally.
Knowing about the pendulum swing helps me have patience with myself as well. Instead of getting frustrated that I’m not at my goal yet, I can see all my misses as gathering information on how to get closer to that goal. If I understand that over-correction is part of the learning process, I can have more patience and compassion with myself as well as with others. Like Goldilocks with her stolen beds and stolen porridge, I can keep trying things out until I find the ones that are just right for me.
