We live on East Street in Middletown, Connecticut. On the west side of East Street, there’s a neighborhood, Sylvan Run Village, in which Eddie loves to walk every morning. Through that neighborhood, there’s a stream that flows north. Since I don’t believe in gravity, I don’t find that particularly troubling. But I did want to know a little more about it.
After a few minutes of research, which included reading the most recent report from the IPCC, issued at the recently concluded COP27 (COP stands for collection of politicians) in Egypt, I learned the 5.4 million square miles of the Antarctic ice sheet are now gone, completely melted. Since water can’t flow on air — and concluding all that water had to go somewhere — I deduced the earth must have rotated on its longitudinal axis, causing the melted ice sheet to flow north … or what had been north.
I broke all that down to Eddie as we were walking this morning. He said the explanation seemed to be plausible, soundly reasoned, and more than sufficient should anyone other than me happen to notice — or care — that the stream flows north.
Life is About Choices
If you were to ask me (no one did, including Eddie), I’d say more of us should try to flow north; that is, we should try to flow in directions other than those prescribed or otherwise deemed good for us.
There’s a pretty fair number of people on this here earth who know me pretty well. None of them knows me as well as I do. None of them lives in my skin. None of them walks in my shoes. None of them thinks my thoughts. None of them is driven by my inclinations. None of them has my imagination. Some of them likely have imaginations better than mine. But none of them creates what I create. None of them writes what I write. None of them believes what I believe for the reasons I believe what I believe.
The same is true for all of you who might read this post. As long as all of us are able to think our thoughts, to follow our inclinations, to use our imaginations, to create what we create, and to believe what we believe, we can choose to flow north.
Who needs gravity anyway?
