Susan Ford was a teenager in the mid-1970s when her father, Gerald Ford, was president. Some of us who were teens at the time kept close track of her hairstyles, clothes and boyfriends.

Susan Ford Bales is now a woman in her 50s, and last week at the funeral of her father, she displayed some of that regal weariness seen in the best 50-something women I know.

Watching Ford’s funeral nurtured my current obsession with the cycles of life, and how if you accept, rather than resist, these cycles everything runs more realistically. You can track cycles everywhere. Consider:

“The cycle of political leaders. The men who were vital leaders when I was young – Ford and Jimmy Carter – are now part of a generation of politicians cycling to the end of their public and private lives.

Those men and women who might run for president in 2008 are mostly in their 40s and 50s. Someday these political figures will show up at each other’s funerals. They’ll be in their 80s and 90s. Today’s teens will be in middle-age, and they’ll wonder how the political leaders from their youth got gray and elderly so fast.

“The cycle of sports. The GU basketball team has lost five of its last six games. I’m writing this before the Saturday home game, so the Zags might have broken their losing streak by today, but I view their losses as part of a healthy cycle.

Teams never stay on top forever. Or even in the top 25. And seasons of struggle hold important lessons for team members, coaches and fans. Mark Few may do the best coaching of his career this season as he digs down deep to handle a team hounded by the past.

“The cycle of celebrity. Britney Spears makes the tabloids daily now for her panty-free, partying ways. In 1992, Madonna appeared nude throughout a coffee-table book titled “Sex.” It was fairly scandalous. The book is a now a collector’s item, but Madonna no longer gets the attention devoted to Spears and company.

“The cycle of enemies. My husband and I recently watched “The Good Shepherd,” a film about the beginning of the CIA. Much of it takes place during the Cold War. The “bad guys” in the film are Russians, of course. As enemies go, they seem almost quaint now.

Before the film started, a preview about an upcoming thriller featured new “enemies” – Arab men wearing traditional head covering and toting big guns. I wonder how many years it will be before Arab enemies seem quaint and outdated, too.

“The cycle of budgets. In December 2002, Gov. Gary Locke met with The Spokesman-Review’s editorial board to explain his budget proposal. The economy was in its post-9/11 funk and cuts were needed everywhere. I asked Locke’s budget guru what it would take to ever again have a flush budget. “An up cycle,” he said.

Gov. Chris Gregoire was here in December, explaining her proposed budget to the editorial board. We’re in an up cycle, folks. But during the meeting, I wondered how many years will pass before we editorial board members are meeting once again with a governor whose proposed budget includes cuts for almost everything, due to a struggling state economy.

“The cycle of recycling. I’ve been reading the writing of Catholic writer Henri Nouwen. He believes that the despair-and-hope cycles we experience as human beings strengthen the spirit within that ultimately gets recycled into a different kind of existence when we die.

Meanwhile, I’m also reading “A Short History of Nearly Everything” by writer Bill Bryson who explains in one chapter how billions of the atoms inside us live on long after we do. He writes: “We are each so vigorously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms probably once belonged to Shakespeare.”

From Shakespeare to Susan Ford Bales, one amazing cycle. Imagine.