They go round and round and round. They (popularly) have a short memory. They go round and round and round. And they go round and round and round. Did I mention that they go round and round and round?
So, yeah, goldfish. Aren't you glad you're not a goldfish? On the plus side, they'd be great in Doctor Who because (a) they have no eyelids so they can't blink so they're not going to be crept up on by a Weeping Angel;
(b) they have short memories so not being able to remember the Silence isn't going to be a huge drawback.
What was I saying?
Aren't you glad you're not a goldfish, destined to repeat the same behaviour over and over and over again?
Except that some of us do.
Well, certainly in sitcoms. Some of the best/worst (and possibly even funniest) sitcom characters are the ones who can't learn, who never learn, whose principal personality flaw is the source of the com in the sitcom.
Like in Dad's Army. Without Captain Mainwaring's pompousness, there's not much left to drive the plot. And that means he never changes (or that the writers know well that the scripts and the money will dry up if he does). Every time someone lights the fuse of Captain Mainwaring's pride and self-insecurity and pompousness, it's a dead cert that there will be hilarious consequences. Or, if you ask me, "hilarious" consequences. Cue barrage balloons and netting and "don't panic" and bumbling and desperate cover stories and humiliation. Captain Mainwaring, fictional construct as he is, can't change. he just goes round and round and round like a goldfish.
The chances of this ending well?
Or Basil Fawlty. There's a man driven by pride and life's unfairness and fear of his little nest of vipers Sybil. They only made twelve episodes, but if they'd made twelve thousand each one would still end with Basil Fawlty's overweening unctuousness or pride dropping him in it big time. He can't change. he can't break out. He just goes round and round and round like a goldfish.
Let's think: how will this pan out?
Who else? There's Hyacincth Bucket, there's Alan Partridge, there's David Brent, there's Edina Monsoon… You can spot their own futile cycles of missed opportunities to learn from the dire consequences int which their overriding character flaws propel them.
And then there's Jay in The Inbetweeners. Interesting one, Jay. He spends three years as a compulsive liar, fabricating sexual conquests and making boats that would have Baron von Munchhausen blushing down to his very toenails. And then in the first film after three series of the TV sitcom are over… Jay is redeemed. Redeemed! A life crisis creeps up on him and he gets the kind of happy ending, the kind of character overhaul that he's long needed. It's a magnificent end to an okay film.
Jay: shafted by scriptwriters.
But then someone decided a sequel was in order. And of course a reformed and redeemed Jay is no use, so he's returned brusquely to his old ways. Old ways cubed, it seems. What can we say? Them's the rules of sitcoms. Change isn't really a possibility.
So. Thank goodness it's only goldfish and sitcom antiheroes.
Oh, and Abraham. Abraham - justified by faith! - is actually quite often driven by fear. Chiefly in the midriff of Genesis, as a bit of a nomad, he is afraid that when he lodges in a place, its king will (a) steal his wife and (b) kill him (although mostly (b) I think). And so he passes off his wife as his sister.
And it ends badly, because when he doe sit in Egypt, his wife is adopted by Pharaoh for his harem, and Abraham survives by dint of being her "brother." But God delivers plagues on Egypt - yes, because of Pharaoh's less-than-enlightened approach to wooing, but also because of Abraham's deception. In the wake of the plagues, Abraham's cunning ruse is discovered and he is told off and sent packing.
At no point does anyone involved say, "Well, that went well."
To be fair, when the choice to pass your wife off as your sister ends with pulsating pustules and expulsion, you might invent a fresh plan.
Not Abraham.
He does it again, a very few chapters later. With - can you guess? - pretty well identical results.
(The odder thing is that his son Isaac, years later, has a similar fear… and an identical plan… which goes spectacularly wrong. Isaac makes it a family affair, a traditional mistake. Oh dear.)
So real people too are driven by the wrong things to make the same mistakes over and over. Even people of faith can be driven by fear to become records jumping in the same groove… stuck, scratched, not getting any nearer the end of the song.
And you may well recognise this trait in yourself. We're all pre-disposed to make mistakes, to jump when things go wrong, and mostly in an unconstructive direction. Fear, selfishness, pompousness, all sorts of inabilities to laugh at ourselves, all mean that we too can be goldfish. Round and round and… did I mention that already?
And then Jesus comes along. Jesus addresses people who keep making the same mistakes. The disciples who continually argue about superiority or greatness. The man at the pool of Siloam who repeatedly never makes it into the healing waters, almost as if he's chosen to sabotage his own life. Almost as if he's worn a comfortable groove and is staying there rather than facing the challenges of getting well again.
Jesus breaks their chains.
Now this has the capacity to end well.
And Jesus breaks our chains too. Patterns of behaviour, kneejerk reactions, terrible stuck-record grooves… Jesus died not just to free us from sin and death, but from mediocrity and futility in this world too.
You don't have to be a goldfish. You can fly free. Jesus will break those patterns and chains that keep us smaller than we should be, that keep us limited. Next time you come bumping down to earth, or realise that little bits of your history keep repeating themselves, have a look and ask Jesus to break you out of the mad repetitions. There's no need to be Abraham, let alone Captain Mainwaring or Hyacinth Bucket. You can let the Son set you free, and then you will be free indeed.
