The first circle is in the upper left corner–the faint circle of human adults in conversation. Humans may exist in adult form for sixty years or more after they pass through the adolescent stage. Though they appear small in the picture, they actually play a very large role because adults are the ones who are in control. Adulthood is marked by several distinct and progressive stages of control: 1.) wishing to be in control, 2.) being in control, 3.) wishing not to be in control, and finally, 4.) wondering what should have been better controlled so things would have turned out differently.
The second circle is that of children chasing one another. This is a sort of larval stage for humans, a proving ground for what they will become as adults. It can be a beautiful stage of human development because there is room for much hope of what they will become. For the meantime, they’ll remain kids, innocent and running around the pond. Gradually, blemishes in their character may become obvious as those on their faces. But still, we will hope because that’s what childhood and adolescence demands of us. This will last until nearly 20 years goes by and adolescence has run its course, and they themselves will morph into adulthood.
The third circle is the pond in the center. Carefully-bred, brightly-colored, and highly-valued koi fish, a kind of carp, are circling just beneath the water’s surface. They’re hard to see except at feeding time, when they churn the waters as they recognize the person who feeds them–yes, koi are capable of recognizing their caretaker feeder–though otherwise they likely have very few thoughts that either the upper left adults or the fountain-chasing children would recognize. Inexplicably, koi enjoy lives that are far longer than our own. One famous scarlet koi named “Hanako” lived a documented, incredibly long lifetime that spanned from 1751 to July 7, 1977. Yet during the two and a quarter centuries of its lifetime, its brain recorded little other than the bubble, bubble of the water, the suck, suck of the water through its gills, and the plop, plop of the food above its head.
And it remembered the image of its caretaker feeders, having watched these humans grow from adolescents to adults-in-control, for generation, after generation, after generation…