Have you heard the one about the rock, the beagle, and the man who walk into a bar ….
Billy Kreigh
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa – whatever and however you celebrate. 2022 is now memories relegated to what we lovingly refer to as “the past.” This is the very first Here’s the Thing column for 2023, and it might be expected that I write about resolutions. Truth is, I heartily dislike resolutions. Through the years when I have succumbed to making a resolution or two, I have found that they inevitably set me up to fail. Who needs that? I can fail quite handily on my own without any kind of resolution.
So I vowed that I most definitely would not write about anything with resolutions. Instead I am going to talk with you about something that interests me, because we all know that it really is all about me. The 65-degree change in outside temperatures in six days, a new year, forging new friendships and memories, looking toward the future, and even pesky resolutions — all are connected in numerous ways. The common denominator that interests me the most is the recognition of change.
It has been noted that the only constant in life is change, which sounds remarkably like an oxymoron. (That is not to be confused with just a moron.) Anyway, to proceed, I am mystified and fascinated by the entire concept of change. It happens. We cannot stop it. Sometimes we are painfully aware of it; sometimes it is not noticeable. Primarily, we cannot affect it in the least, but geesshh, does it do a number on us!
Absolutely everything changes, and I do not mean like in days, months, years, eons. I mean like every single dang second all is changing. The weather I mentioned earlier — change. Trees, mountains, animals, insects, each of us — change. Let me give you a for instance: We lose our cells constantly. Get this, the weight of the cells we lose each year through cell death is close to our entire body weight. Seriously, who knew? Want an even more startling fact? About 300 million body cells die every minute that we live. Now that is not a “combination” number, like all of us together; nope, that is each of us.
Why, one can almost imagine a horror movie script where we are all traipsing around like Golden Retrievers shedding and sloughing with every breath and soon we are drowning in dead cells! OK, let’s move on.
According to those who actually study and know this stuff, our bodies make 3.8 million cells (give or take) every second! You do the math. I am not making this stuff up. Granted, I am capable of making up almost anything, but this you can check, and as with every student with whom I ever shared a classroom, I encourage you to do just that.
Next, let’s consider the Earth and its changes over time. No, this is not the beginning of a “climate change” sermon, just a couple of points that I find compelling. As a neat exercise, find a map of the world. Spread it out flat in front of you. Now look at the seven continents. Pay particular attention to the shapes and shorelines. Five of the continents are connected by land; Antarctica and Australasia/Oceania are separated from the others by oceans. Now, imagine that you love puzzles. Can you visualize connecting all of the continents together to form one land mass, one super-continent? As a starter for this exercise, “pull” Africa over to South America. Could we not have a conversation about this?
Weather, of course, changes the Earth. Volcanoes, seismic shifts, gravitational pull from the moon, the flow of water, sediment movement, earthquakes (those we are aware of and those we are not), air movement and pressure, precipitation — well, that is a beginning list. One of the more evident causes of change to our Earth is population – as of November 15, 2022, according to the United Nations, we have reached 8 billion people. Consider for a moment how that might affect the Earth. Projections are that by 2050 our population will exceed 9.8 billion and 11.2 billion – give or take – by 2100. A conversation, am I right?
Space is not left out of this equation either. That vast never ending cosmos changes constantly with stars dying, planets forming and shifting, black holes (do not even get me started on this one). Vast topic, so let’s consider only one aspect of solar change – the one for which humans are responsible. The “technical” term for this is “space junk.” Hundreds of thousands of man-made objects are careening in our Earth’s orbit. Specifically, the US is tracking over 26,000 pieces of “junk” that are the size of a softball or larger that could destroy a satellite on impact; over 500,000 only the size of a marble yet large enough to cause damage to a spacecraft, and over 100 million the size of a grain of salt that could puncture a space suit. Every country contributes to the “space garbage dump.” Again, do not take my word here, head to the library and begin your search with the Kessler Syndrome. (How space debris created the world’s largest garbage dump, bigthink.com. Hard Science, May 17, 2021)
Here’s the thing: Every single thing relating to nature experiences constant change: Inanimate, animate — change. Even objects not directly under nature’s influence do not escape unscathed.
Consider a car, a lamp, a refrigerator, a TV, the carpet — change. Anything living, from the moment of life beginning right up to that very last moment when life ceases, all experiences in between those two distinct points — change. Cannot escape it; it happens. We can adapt, ignore, or deny it, but that’s not going to change change in the slightest.
So what to do? Heck, as always I have so very few answers. Maybe we could begin our initial conversation discussing that which we think never changes. The list would definitely be shorter.
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Editor’s Note: This is one of a series of articles written by a group of retired and current teachers — Ken Ballinger, Billy Kreigh, Marianne Darr-Norman, and Anna Spalding. Their intent is to spur discussions at the dinner table and elsewhere. You may also voice your thoughts and reactions via The News-Banner’s letters to editor.
