I’ve thought for some time now that, if I were to get a tattoo, I would get one of the Ouroboros. You’ve probably seen it, even if you don’t recognise the name off the top of your head. You know, it’s the image of the snake eating its own tail. Yes, I know: it sounds a bit cliché; and no, it’s not because I’m a Slytherin. My fascination with the Ouroboros began when I first read GK Chesterton’s famous book, Orthodoxy. Chesterton is someone I would most definitely describe as “curmudgeonly”. He’s astoundingly conservative, and he makes no apologies for it. All the same, what I most like about him is how his thought is expressed so whimsically. For example, he interprets Hume’s problem of induction, which concludes that we only observe sequences of events rather than causal connections, as nature’s encore—a very theatrical interpretation, if you ask me. He uses image of the Ouroboros, however, to express the point at which reason “eats itself” and, rather than maintain the integrity of the human being, it breeds insanity, as passion is often thought to do instead.

This was my introduction to the ouroboros, but it was far from the last time this image would come to mind. Reading Albert Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus, I was reminded once again of this image and its relation to suicide (because the snake is literally eating its own tail). Camus famously said that suicide is the only truly serious philosophical problem, and so I became infatuated with this question of why we so often destroy ourselves—maybe not literally, but perhaps in smaller ways, like moral compromises or burying our emotions until they burst. As I dealt with mental health difficulties myself, I naturally reflected on this image’s significance for me. I was both tormented by and fascinated with my mind’s capacity to cannibalise itself like the snake. So, the image took on this existential meaning for me: in some sort of hybrid of both Camus and Chesterton, for me the ouroboros came to symbolise the paradox at the heart of human life as well as my own.

I thought the motif might end there, but it didn’t. Studying religions of the world, in particular those of the Far East, the Ouroboros found me again, this time in the notions of samsara and impermanence. Samsara, for those unfamiliar, is the cycle of birth-and-death-and-rebirth that can be found in the Hindu and Buddhist faiths. Certainly, there are many who interpret this cycle as something very metaphysical, suggesting that people may be reborn as other people or even animals. That said, I think you could apply the idea to our own lives as well. I am reminded of a Doctor Who episode where the Doctor, who was about to be “reborn” himself, opined that “we’re all different people, all through our lives”. And honestly, I could get behind that. I think he’s got an excellent point. We’re all changing: sometimes more, sometimes less, but never exactly the same. Our notion of a static “self” is simply the result of our perspective. Have you ever passed by someone you knew long ago, only to feel as though you’re not really seeing them but an imposter in their stead? That’s what I mean.

So, you might say that you, too, die and are reborn in a kind of poetic way; and when you think about it, it is rather like the image of the Ouroboros that we’ve been discussing. At once, the snake is paradoxically both nourished and consumed—living and dying, not unlike Schrödinger’s cat. It’s not simply about death, as I had previously mused, but might also be seen as a representation of this life-and-death cycle. That is to say, yes, there appears to be something twisted and terrifying about it, but it is not unlike life in that, whilst there is death, there is also life—yin and yang. In the midst of this cycle, one’s experience is bound to be somewhat unnerving, but if you stop, breathe, and look at the cycle for what it is, I think it is possible to find a state of inner peace.

The Ouroboros, then, is not solely a meditation on impermanence and the limitations of the mind, but a recognition of the ebb-and-flow of our existence. It is the profound recognition that to “feed” and “be fed upon”— that is, to live and to die—are not as dissonant as we may believe. And while this particular conclusion, in this instance, has been reached via the philosophy of the east, you may just as well attribute it to the man who said, “He that findeth his life shall lose it” (Matthew 10:39). Tricky as it may seem, at the core of every paradox is something profoundly true, including the Ouroboros. Or at least that is how I like to interpret it.