Sweet Briar College - Briar Patch Yearbook (Sweet Briar, VA)

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. ' t , if ♦.• . :f.- - of Time, of that which remains constant through change . . . Man took a first step toM-ard civiliza- tion with his invention of the wheel; throughout the cultures of both the Occident and the Orient, the wheel has been used as a vehicle for symboliz- ing concepts of lime, and life, and the meaning of human existence. To the Orient, the revolu- tions of the wheel symbolize the circular motion of time — a process of endless repetition. The lives of individuals are thought of as caught up in this motion, as every soul is fated to be born into the

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THF ANNUAL PUBLTCATTON OF THF STUnFNT BODY sWHEl BRIAR COLL ii, i, S W H H 1 BRIAR, V 1 R C, 1 1 1 A J t t t ♦ .

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' l ♦ 4 ' ♦ ' ♦ » ' • world asiain and ap;ain until it is molded and re- fine«l throufjh its successive experiences of the noblest of human values and strivings. That rare soul which hecoines the enihodiment of the finest aspects of human life, purified of its dross, escapes the cycle of time and life and becomes a part of timelessness. To the West, the movement forwar I of a turninji wheel symbolizes a concept of the nature of time, not as endless repetition, but as a linear motion through a process of con- stant change. So, human life, too, is looked upon as a forwar«l progression toward an envisioned goal, whether as the progress of civilization to- ward the realization of its values, or as the similar progression in an indivitlual life. Here we use a wheel, designed from an old Persian wheel of M life ' in stone, as a symbol of this academic year 1961-62 — an eclectic symbol, with concepts «lrawn from both East and West to characterize our life and the time we spend at Sweet Briar. One revolu- tion of this wheel represents the repetition of a 1 4 W| u f j 4. yearly cycle: annual college events, traditions, the (lay-l -da ritual of allciidiiig classes and studying. The wheel moves forward, loo. with (he changes brought by each revolulion. Mcndicrs of the stu- dent body and faculty change, new traditions grow up from (he old; each student herself, while fun- damentally the same person she was at her arrival here and at her departure, lives for four years in an eiiviroiiMieiit «itli cndlfss opportunities for en- riching herself. The structure of this environment is represented in the very structur ' of tiie wheel. Kach of its spokes represent a part of the struc- ture which retains an en luring value (picturefl by ItiKJdliist symbols) through the years, and which draw onr individual lives into a common bo«ly of experience. Yet we are individually af- fected by the ideas, the people, the events which conu ' into our lives: we make an individual prog- ress as we are borne aU ng to new vistas with the constantly new experience of life, as the wheel turns. 102937 ;»