Time doesn’t pass. It accumulates.

And if those look like wrinkles, think again. They’re just creases from carrying around the time I’ve been blessed to amass so far. Time isn’t a burden. But it’s heavy.

So, if time accumulates, then mistakes aren’t made. They’re built.

Bad choices appear to be the quickest to make and the longest to live. But we bring each and every moment we’ve walked through to the moment currently experienced. So a bad decision may seem to have been made on the fly, but it had a history. And now you share its future.

So what does it mean to have a future as well as all that time already accumulated? Well, I’m becoming quite convinced that part of the point of getting older, of life itself actually, is to access patterns. We have to witness a thing a time or two—or more—before a pattern starts to emerge. And that usually takes time.

Quite intimidatingly, one of the first patterns that started to take shape for me was comprised of all those quote-unquote mistakes. All of a sudden I could recognize great patterns of error: errors in judgment, tactical errors, course errors. I realized I had been wrong about almost everything. Before, I had thought that I had known a thing or two, that I had gained some modicum of maturity. So, first hint: if you think you’re mature, you’re not. If you think you don’t have a clue, then you’re at least mature enough to have figured out that much.

By definition, the experience and observation necessary for a good old-fashioned pattern hunt comprise an empirical approach—versus superstitious adherence to coincidence and night-sky logic. Oh sure, such “reason” might seem like a harmless dalliance, but it commits the unforgivable by trading pseudo-patterns for real ones, thereby eclipsing the latter. For that reason, without getting into alignments and cusps, or pissing off more people than I already have, suffice to say that—unless you’re an astronomer or sailor—if you care about finding meaningful patterns, leave the poor galaxy alone. So, second hint: if your age is still calculated in lunar cycles, you’re young. If you’re inclined to cutesy anniversaries like, for instance, calculating the age of your relationship in lunar cycles—then your relationship is young and so are you.

So what’s the most important pattern I’ve detected as a screenwriter, you ask. The answer is simple, and it’s written in the beginning and ending of every great movie you’ve ever seen. Come on, Dorothy figured it out. And she was just a puppy. See, ‘cause a catastrophe takes age off the table and replaces it with engraved experience. That’s why the School of Hard Knocks has such a weighty diploma.

Circles, cycles, spirals—these are the patterns of journeys that are measured in growth, not distance. The reason a good story—and especially a movie—has to come full circle, beginning and ending at the same spot, is because it highlights the fact that all journeys are really internal, the important ones anyway. A beginning and ending that echo one another emphasizes the arc that the protagonist has undergone. In this way, a circular story says, “Look, here we are back at the same place, but we’ve still gone somewhere. A story has unfolded nonetheless. Our hero is different. A journey has been accomplished.”

If the setting is the same but something about the hero has changed, the transformation is rendered in strong relief. After all, a tree doesn’t go anywhere but manages to experience its life and the world around it—and a circle appears. The tree wears its growth in a ring that joins its circumference. Corny analogy perhaps, but true. And in our own way, we join our tree-like characters in their static journeys. We travel in the vessel that they provide, and we course our way from the mind to its pages and its film and to the mind again in a cycle of gaining awareness that accumulates the wrinkles and creases of worthy odysseys.