Post #198: Like a Rolling Wheel

11 July 2026

“How does it feel, how does it feel

To be on your own

With no direction home

Like a rolling stone“

—Bob Dylan, ”Like a Rolling Stone“

     A rolling stone gathers no moss, says the proverb—and that is supposed to be bad news, a regrettable failure to accumulate assets and responsibilities. Nothing against either of these two: money is not everything (I must insist), but it helps (I readily admit), and we do need a bit more reliable adult behavior in this world, not just protracted childhoods and adolescences.

     Still, I remain unconvinced by the image. What is so great, I would like to know, about sitting in a corner and gathering moss? Are we really meant to roll to some spot (as so many of us no doubt do), come to a halt, and spend much of our life getting slowly overgrown wherever we have come to rest—or are we not rather wheels that are supposed to keep grinding on, sand and rust, creaking and cracking, with all the pains and aches, of the heart not least, that give life its bittersweet flavor? As my resident Buddha reminds me in her sagacious moments: get born, get hurt, get old, and die…

     In the Bob Dylan version, there is meant to be something of the castaway to a rolling stone; for Muddy Waters it had something to do with the Blues; for the Rolling Stones, something to do with Muddy Waters. I can relate to all of them, more or less (who can’t, that’s what makes for great songs), but I still prefer my creaky rotations—as a more realistic metaphor for life—to their rocking and rolling.

     The relentless turning of the wheel brings plenty of pain along with the joy. Perhaps more pain than joy. To the Buddhists, the ceaseless churning is synonymous with Samsara and Dukkha, our endless cycling around the unsatisfying element in each and every sensory experience. But the journey can be beautiful too, not only in its delights, but maybe even in its miseries. Loss hurts; outright bereavement devastates and debilitates us. But the closing of happy chapters in one’s life can bring a kind of sorrow too, which, though no occasion for mourning, hurts nonetheless. Children are born, they grow wings, they learn to fly, and they leave the nest. It is a proud and joyous moment when they do, but tinged with melancholy all the same. The once-little ones will never be little again, and it is not only parents who are liable to such growing pains. All things born, the Buddhists chant their tireless refrain, will age and mature (let us hope), bloom and flower, fade and wilt, then pass away to make room for something new. As incontrovertible in principle as it is difficult to accept in practice.

     I found it very touching when I first read that brides in Roman times, who were often very young, would deposit their childhood dolls at the temple on the eve of their weddings. It is a fitting ritual that cannot be called sad; still there is something mournful about seeing such once-beloved things discarded, and realizing that the child to whom they once belonged is no more and will never be back. There’s nothing bad going on, certainly nothing heartbreaking, and yet it may bring tears. Would we want to be entirely without this kind of grief?

     I think not. Enjoy your suffering: it is the price of sentience, and of caring (no. 33). Love and pain are not simply two sides of the same coin; but who would dare deny that they are the closest of associates? Of course Love, the detached and equanimous kind, is also the sovereign remedy (no. 55); but all love does not need to be so perfectly pure to count for something. So long as we remain human, all-too human, never perfect, there will always be some bitterness mixed in with the sweetness. That is what I take the Buddhists to mean by Dukkha, not that there is only misery in the world, which is plainly untrue.

     (For Fritz, 8 April 2025)