A Fench Proverb

*Note: A series of events, and events that have been uneventful (both of which have had nothing to do with Lemony Snicket), have led to the following post. Every once in a while I'll get urges to do things. Today it is to write.

The French have a saying,

“Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.”

Which translated is: the more things change, the more they remain the same. The first time I heard that philosophy, I couldn't quite wrap my head around the it. I think I've finally figured it out.

In this world all things are made up of the same thing: energy. Atoms are the basic building blocks for all elements, and elements make up all things depending on their combinations and numbers. In mathematics numbers are the building blocks. And if you put them into ratios, such as Aristotle's Golden Mean, then it puts things into a different light. As you Divinci Code readers, and mathematicians are familiar with, the Golden mean has been used in hundreds of things. People are obsessed with it, and for good reason: it's everywhere. The nautilus shell's spirals are in complete proportion with the irrational number of 1.618 (the golden mean in it's decimal form).

The spiral that goes into your inner ear follows the same pattern, as well as the placement of seeds on a sunflower. But the ratio stretches to more than spirals. Let's take, for example the Fibonacci sequence (1,1,3,5,8..etc), and it's tale-tale (no pun intended) story of the reproduction of bunnies. The Golden Mean's chords are also sang in the Notre Dame Cathedral. Architects of the Pyramids and Parthenon have used the ratio in an effort for man's creations to imitate God's. Pythagorean used it with his famous and fundamental triangle. If you were to take a measurement of your head and compare it to the length the rest of your body you will get 1.618. If you do it with the rest of your body, you will be doing the same study as Leonardo Da Vinci's Virtruvian man.

Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Raphael, all were dedicated users of Phi, the Divina Proportione. 1.618.

I mentioned before that the golden mean had a name attached to it...Aristotle. He claimed that it is the middle ground between excess and deficiency. One of the first philosophies of moderation. And while the golden mean is looked at as a Greek standard of beauty (if every aspect of your face were in proportion with this ratio, you would have the most perfect, and beautiful face), it would be suggested that moderation is beautiful. That's what Keats was saying with his famous poem:

Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Although it make look like it, I am not obsessed with the number Phi, I'm merely illustrating that it's everywhere...is it a divine proportion? Evidence of intelligent design? A number to moderately live by? An ideal form of calculated beauty? I'll let you answer that. My part is to show that all of these tangents have a common center, like spokes to an ever-turning wheel. They are all variations on a theme. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Perhaps whomever created everything in this world, created human nature as well. Our lives are daily changing. The only thing that is constant is change. Some changes occur over a prolonged period of time, making the transformation subtle. Others happen in the blink of an eye.

But we are all dancing the same dance: we're born, we live, we die. The sexes with their various complexities can be boiled down to two simple facts: overall, women think more with their heart, and men, more with their head. And in spite of all of the advances in mathematics and technology there will never be an engineer who can bridge the gender gap. Buttered bread will always land face down. Laughter will always be the best medicine. Cultures will always be intolerant of other cultures. And love will always come with a pair of rose colored glasses. These are absolutes; proof that some things are certain. Some things are constant. And from consistency, it's possible to find understanding.

I'm not sure why, but there's something comforting in this thought. It gives rhyme reason and reason to rhyme. It's a soothing philosophy, one that's meant to wash over souls like undulating waves. Something you can hold onto when you feel like your world is spinning out of control. And from this point of view, change doesn't seem so bad.
...But then, you've heard all of this before, haven't you?

La vie est belle. Life is beautiful.