The Seasons Of Our Lives: A Review

There’s so much order everywhere around us, if only we stop and take the time to be aware of it. The seasons come and go, without fail, year after year. Of course, man tries and disrupts this at times with his interference but by and large, the seasons are predictable, with a few hiccups to bring back balance when man creates an imbalance.

I was reading an e-book the other day and what began as a cursory ‘Let’s see what this is all about’ attitude, suddenly, what I read, I found gripping. Here was this author who was trying to see whether our lives had seasons too and if so, how long each season lasted.

George Pan Kouloukis is Greek and he’s an attorney-at-law, a barrister who provides his legal services to leading Greek corporations. This book is a far cry from his legal profession. They are his observations after painstaking research into a number of famous people’s lives from the past as well as the present and the conclusions he arrives at as well as the questions he raises at the end could just be very pertinent for our lives. His e-book is available free on the internet and the reason he has done this is so that as many people as possible can make use of these findings and apply it to their own lives. 

The author was curious as to why people went through phases of ups and downs in their lives and that led him to do extensive research into the lives of famous people in order to try and find a common pattern. He also spoke to regular, everyday people so he could draw parallels. What he extrapolated from all this research was astounding. He saw a pattern that seemed to run through all these lives – a pattern that seemed to echo through every ordinary person’s life as well, even his own. What George Pan Kouloukis wanted to do was to get as much material as possible so he wasn’t swayed in any way. He wanted to draw objective conclusions from as many examples as possible. 

So what did he come up with? He found that in all the cases, there was a peak and a trough. There were 16 to 17 years which constituted a good season and 16 to 17 years that were a bad season. The strange thing is, people were divided into two. While the period remained the same, one group went through a good season the same time that the rest went through a bad season. The season that has just gone by is the period between 1990 and 2007. The one we are in right now will run roughly from 2007 to 2024. 

The author has an impressive list of life histories which he has drawn from. From Beethoven and Verdi to Picasso and Rodin. From Queen Elizabeth I and King Henry VIII to Winston Churchill and Mikhail Gorbachev. From Elizabeth Taylor and Aristotle Onassis to Maria Callas and more. 

What he does leave us with is how to use this knowledge. Not all good seasons are full of sunny days just as not all bad seasons are full of dark days. However, the general trend during these 16-17 year periods reflects a positive season or a negative season. If we are aware of which period we are in, it just makes us more prepared, he feels and we can take steps to mitigate or enhance our circumstances. Bad seasons, he feels, are not meant for us to hibernate and hide away from the world. With the right effort, we can deal with and maybe even reverse certain situations. 

He also feels that if we are attuned to these seasons, we as a race could become a lot more philosophical. We’ll learn to be more peaceful, he feels, because we know that our time and turn will come too – no bad season will last forever. No good season will either, so that makes us a lot more realistic and tolerant. 

Other Cycles

Everything around us has its ups and downs, a balance if you will. What goes up must needs come down. For every action, there must needs be an equal and opposite reaction. So are the seasons of our lives simply following the laws of Nature? A time to receive and a time to give? A time to take and a time when things are taken from us? 

Right through ancient history, man has been fascinated by the cycles of time and one of the most popular ones used was the Metonic lunar cycle which ran for 18.6 years. The Jewish calendar uses this cycle which was named after the ancient Athenian astronomer Meton.  There’s a large stone in Knowth, Ireland that illustrates this. 

(Click here for information on the Neolothic Calendarstone in Knowth)

The civilization that grew around Stonehenge, too, is supposed to have followed this cycle. The ancient Zoroastrian astrology on the other hand, followed the 32-year personal calendar. How did these ancient people figure out the various cycles without the modern technology that we have?

Closer to us in time, we have the Homer Hoyt/Fred Harrison 18 year cycle when it comes to real estate in the USA. One can find parallel cycles in the stock market ebb and flow in most countries. 

So what does that leave us with? Questions? Is all of this just co-incidence or is there a very clear pattern that is at play? Just supposing there is, are we prepared? Should we just accept what the fates dish out or will this knowledge empower us to handle our lives better?