THE CAROUSEL HORSE AND THE TWO BRASS RINGS

                                  

     When I was a kid I remembered stories about carousels and the brass rings that they had. I only remember one as a kid, myself, but my parents knew of many, and my grandparents could recall  as children when  EVERY carousel had a brass ring. Like I said, precious few of them had brass rings that I remember, and as time went by, the rings dissappeared altogether. They are long gone now  and it is very rare to find one that still has the polished brass ring that, if pulled, offered a free ride.
     Everyone I know has been on a carousel horse at one time or another, and I will bet that even if the ring was there, most people didn't even take notice of it.  I did hear of a carousel with two rings, however.  No more difficulty either way, though.  The horses still traveled in one direction, clockwise, while the brass rings rotated on a painted wall in the center, in the opposite direction. 
     All in all, a carousel is  a slow, enjoyable ride that allows you to rise and fall a bit as you watch the world go by.  All fun and games.  That is, unless you were, or knew of, one of those kids who had an inexplicable NEED  to grasp hold of the ring and be seen as "the winner".  Now assuming this is just a carousel, we don't take much notice of the determined rider who spins like a Dervish turn after turn.  We pay our tickets, ride, and leave to carry on with our day.  But spend a little time watching, and you may find a child who will do nothing else but define their entire day by that one single ring, and waste the rest of the day enjoying the park, just so long as they can be seen as "the winner".
     Now like I said, this is of no great consequence when it is just a carousel, or just one determined rider with an overdeveloped desire to be seen as the best, or even one day at an amusement park that was wasted.  But when you stop and consider that this type of behavior is played out in relationships and marriages all the time, the analogy becomes a tragedy. 
     So you fell in love and got married.  You got into the park, walked straight and proud right up to the carousel, paid your ticket and set your sights on the brass ring.  You weren't the winner yet, because you didn't know the first thing about how to ride, and reach, and gauge time and distance, but you'd learn.  The ride starts and  little by little, you get the hang of it.  Close, but the ride ends too quickly.  No worries.  Everyone appreciates a person of conviction,right?  Pay the man again and at least be seen as dedicated.  Not that time either?  That's okay.  Just pay him again and take another year...I mean ride and see if you can get it the next time. Or the next time. Or the next time.
     See the pattern?  If you do, you are one step ahead of the game.  Because most people DON'T.  They haven't been able to grab the ring to be seen as "the winner" and so to them, they aren't.   But to get off the ride now simply assures them of the fact that all of the people who had been watching them, and appreciating their dedication and efforts to remain steadfast, will somehow forget the countless attempts to grab the ring as a noble effort, and simply see them as "the quitter" when they finally step off the platform.  And so they keep right on riding. Over and over and over.

     Now here is where it gets even more distressing to watch and confusing to understand.  Since the ring is no more within their grasp now than it has ever been, the main goal of the ride, for the person who sits atop the horse, is no longer to grab the ring to be seen as "the winner", but to keep riding, no matter what, so at least they won't be seen as "the loser".  The brass ring is no longer the goal to the rider.  They have long since abandoned the hope that they will ever attain it. The brass ring now is simply the 'red herring' that people use to recognize and rationalize  the intention of the rider to be on the ride at all.  The real fact is that all the rider can do now to justify their existence, is keep riding, whether they like it or tolerate it, or hate it, and have themselves be verified by others who watch them in their ride (their life) as being diligent and steadfast and noble in the effort.  There is no winning in attaining the brass ring any more, but because they can do nothing else but ride, they can at least avoid being seen as the failure they believe they will be if they stop.  And so all they do is ride.  turn after turn, year after year, attempt after attempt, until the park (and their lives) closes and shuts off the lights of the amusement park.  And the saddest thing about this analogy, is that there is only one trip to the amusement park.  You don't get a second chance to go back and see the rest of the park for all it had to offer.

     This frustrates me no matter how many times I try to explain this to other people.  Mostly because the primary rationalization for continuing this fruitless endeavor is their belief that the same people watch them from the side of the carousel for the entire duration of ALL the attempts to be seen as worthy.  But that just isn't true.  While it would make the efforts of the rider be seen as worth more to believe that others  spent their whole time at the amusement park ( or their lives) watching this one rider, the truth is that those watchers come and go.  They are never the same people watching  all the time.  They are different people all watching some of the time.  And how would a rider truly understand that, if all they could discern clearly was the the horse?  How would the rider be able to recognize individual people if all they could see was a blurred and spinning exterior wall of people?  The truth is, they can't, and they don't.  The people watching this  rider from the outside only see a person riding a horse, and no differently than they see all the other riders.  To them, the brass ring is no more important to this one rider as it is for any other.  Not for the tenacity of the dream of a brass ring that is greater than anyone else, or for the repeated efforts time and time again that makes the single rides of others seem irrelevant when compared to their repeated efforts. Just that one ride.  Because if the observers are only there to watch the ride once, how can they ever possibly know that this one rider was there all day long?  They don't.  The well deserved recognition of the continued effort becoming no more attainable or worthy of praise than the  unreachable ring.

     The analogy  between a person's life and a ride on a carousel horse, can be explained a bit further when you compare the brass ring to a particular person that the rider strives to win the favor of.  Love is not easily defined, and the reasons for why one person loves another, even more so.  I don't think it is up to me to decide what should, and should not, be the criteria for why one person loves another.  For each person it is different.  And for each person they love in their own time, they are loved for different reasons.  Sometimes I think that people simply say they love another without quantifying why it is that they do. But that, again, is not up to me.  Who I love, and why I love them, is just as individual and unique to myself as I am to the person who loves me, so ascribing my ideas and definitions of what love is or should be, onto someone else's notion of it, is unacceptable. Even to myself.

     If, though, the person who rode the carousel horse saw the person they loved as the brass ring, it would seem to me that attaining it would be as simple as figuring out which horse to sit atop to maximize the chance of reaching it, gauging the speed of the carousel, and then planning whether to reach up or down as the horse passed by the ring.  Complex when seen on the whole, but basically rather simple when broken down to it's smaller more predictable operations.  But what happens when the ring is not as stationary as it was explained to be in the beginning?

     Many people seem to take an almost disturbing  pleasure in making the ring as difficult  as possible to achieve by the rider who wants nothing more than to do exactly what is required and expected to attain it.  The rider can be an absolute master of looking at all of the variables necessary to maximize the likelyhood that the brass ring is there for the taking  because they have gone to the extra effort of ensuring they want it the most, and then putting forth the energy to hold it in their hand.  That is all very plausible and logical, assuming that it is, indeed, just a ring, and not a person who finds more pleasure in watching them work for it than it is to give it to them for the trying.  To them, anything that can offset the planning of the rider; by twisting the ring from its expected position, or altering the size of the ring, and even changing the speed of the horse to make it so that it can never be attained, makes the efforts of the rider become moot and pointless.  To them, the purpose of the rider is to see them bend and contort, and stretch to the limits of their capacity and planning, only to have the ring suddenly deviate and become unattainable again.  It is not the having of the ring that defines the success of the rider or the ride to the 'ring'.  It is to keep them from having it and making them ride again, and again, that is the goal.  To have another person's  life defined entirely by this kind of treatment is at least insensitive, and at worst, cruel and inhumane.  It is the expenditure of effort by another person for their own sense of hapiness,  for nothing more than to  see  another person expend it for what they need of love.

     I need to go back just a bit to the carousel I mentioned before that had two rings rather than one.  Because a life( like an amusement park)) isn't really chosen by us.  You simply show up at it because that is where we were brought to. Almost as if you were born at the turnstyle. And while some amusement parks have a carousel with one ring, and you do what you can with that one ring to achieve it for your own, there are those rare times, that a person is brought to an amusement park(or a life) with a carousel that has two rings.  A built-in second chance on the same ride to have exactly what they want.  You didn't choose the park, and you didn't have the option of a one ring carousel or a two ring carousel for that matter, but it was given to you, nonetheless.

     Sometimes, a carousel rider will suddenly come to realize that the one ring they thought was the only option, and spinning twice as fast, is actually TWO rings.  Suddenly, there is an alternative that was previously unseen or unrecognized, and on closer examination as they rode past, was of a completely different nature than the one ring they believed it to be.  What was perceived before simply as a contortion of the one ring  to appear attainable on one pass and then unattainable on the next, was actually two different rings, behaving in two separate patterns with two completely different goals.  One that sought to define by continuing the ride, and one that hoped to end it to go on to the rest of the amusement park.  One that occupied its time by being elusive, and the other that was actually going out of its way to be pulled from its ring and hoisted aloft as the vehicle for the riders triumph over adversity.  The laurels for all they strive for so long to attain.  Theirs to have as their own, but earned on their own as well for all that the rider has been appreciated for all this time.

But remember, that this rider is no longer looking to the rings as the objects that define their existence and worth in the world. The rings are the 'red herrings' now. It is the ride itself that defines the worth of the rider by how  they believe they have been seen by the spectators as someone to admire for their efforts. Because if either of the rings is grabbed now, the ride is over.  True, a new ride will be gained by the winning of the ring, in either case,but it will be with a whole new awareness of what they are defined by.  Not as just the picture of dilligence, but as the happy and deserving victor.  And that is just something most people are no longer capable of understanding the value of, regardless of their ability to do so.  By being seen and defined with one set of attributes for so long, a whole new  appreciation  of the rider must begin by the grasping of either ring.  By pulling the ring that makes itself as large as it can, and aims itself toward the fingers of the rider, and even lifts itself from the hook to angle itself directly toward the head of the horse, a whole new  life will begin. A life defined by being seen as worthy of praise for something other than endurance.  Of qualities that go above the mere need to twist and spin for recognition or respect.  It is a life recognized for what has already been done, not for what is done over and over. To do either one is to simply stop being what is now.  Both with their own merits, and both with their own  uncertainty.  And so they continue to strive for the twisting unattainable ring, and duck the other.

   Were it possible for one of the rings to suddenly drop to the platform of the carousel, or be pulled from its hook by another person, the effort could then be concentrated again on the one remaining ring with no one the wiser except for the rider.  After all, who would blame the rider if suddenly the situation saw fit to leave only one option?

     These two rings also have one other quality to each of them that can not be seen even to the rider of the carousel, and that is that one ring strives to make itself as attainable as possible and the other as small as possible, but with the spinning of the carousel, it is very difficult to see which one is which in the brief moment it passes by.  One ring sees no problem in sharing the space on the rotating column with the other, just so long as it is given the ability to be pulled with  as much opportunity as the other holds itself at bay. One sees the perpetuation of its existence by the withholding of itself, and the other prefers and end to itself as a goal to become something else entirely.  The choice, if offered to the rider for what it is worth, is still, and always will be, up to the rider to discern.  Maybe not on this turn, but eventually, and on the terms of the rider  and not on those of either ring.  It is their carousel, their horse, their ride, and most importantly, their ring to have.

      I have been slowly amassing a great number of letters and emails from people(both women AND men) with two of the most surprising statements.  The first is that I have hit the nail right on the head more often than not.  That this is EXACTLY what it feels like for them to be in the situations they they have found themselves.  And not only find themselves in, but justify as what is expected of them to be seen worthy.  The other, and I find this absolutely tragic, is that they honestly feel like they were the only ones.  That this carousel had only enough money for one horse and strapped one person to it like a sailor strapped with an albatross.
     I have to be honest, and say, that if you feel as though you are the only person in this misguided revolving rodeo, that maybe what you should do is look to your left and right and see how many of us have been riding along on someone elses caravan for far too long.  That this carousel (less like an amusement park ride and more  like a "ship of fools") because we feel we are the only one riding on it. We spent so much time pretending to every other person around us that it was perfect and that what we painted as the truth was what we told ourselves we were supposed to do, that we completely lost sight of who we started doing it for originally.  And that was ourselves.  We climbed onto the carousel for what it would bring to our own lives as well as to someone elses.   But instead, we became of ourselves only what we would be made by others who had us do what it was they expected of ourselves without taking into account what we needed from someone else. All the while spinning our lives in circles waiting for rewards that will not come from where we want, or fighting it from the places it would.

     If it were up to me, I would like to see the riders of carousel horses do one of two things.  Grasp the ring that allows itself to be taken, or resolve to walk away from the ride to go see the rest of the amusement park if it doesn't.

     But I'd like to see the rings do something as well.  Either tilt themselves to be grabbed for all that the rider has earned for the effort and wishes to receive of them, or drop to the platform to give the opportunity to the other ring.  Because every rider, whether they grab the ring or not, has already proved their desire to be happy by riding in the first place. They have seen fit to set their sights and achieve their goals on what  the brass ring represents and for all it can bring to their lives, and they have continuously proven their dedication to the receipt of it by still paying the tickets to ride.  It is not the place of the ring, however justified they may feel, to dictate the worth of the rider by prolonging  in the endeavor to define themselves.  It is the job of the ring to be simply that. A ring. To hold where it is for all that it can be, and simply let the rider who needs it the most, take it and be defined by the greater things they hoped to achieve when they climbed on to the carousel for the very first time.