Bridge in the Woods

Amorella here. The bridge is not very long and the gully is not all that deep. People cross over from one hill in time to another every day and don’t think too much about it. The old adage, “A watched pot never boils,” suggestion is not literal of course. The word in question is “never”. Human beings have a tendency to use the word like they know what it means, which they do not. 

I agree with your intent, Amorella, but people do not use the word literally. At least I cannot imagine that any one does. Back to my trusty Merriam-Webster’s – never: “1: not ever : at no time; 2: not in any degree : not under any condition”.

This is a somewhat strange definition. I thought you could not define something by what it is not. I mean, you can, but I thought it was better to define something by what it is, not by what it is not. There are not many absolutes, actually none that I can think of – well, birth and death, and as some say, taxes. In fact, otherwise, being absolute may tend to make one dead sooner rather than later.

When I was a kid, someone in our family used to say, “never say never,” and I always thought the saying very funny. It is a joke. Never is almost always a joke, except with birth, death and taxes, at least to me. If someone uses the word as an absolute rather than how most people use it – meaning “almost never or highly unlikely” then I discount herorhis thinking processes.

This reminds me of a little joke I would pull on people just to get them thinking more deeply. If I had the power to control nature for twenty-four hours I would have the sun come up on the west and go down, quite normally in the east. Just once. Now that would be funny. Mostly I think of the dissertations that would be written on it for the rest of humanity’s existence. After a while, probably a couple or so generations, people would deny it ever happened, which of course would make it even funnier.

People deny things that happen every day. Shut the sun off for thirty seconds then turn it back on. That would do it too. It would be frightening at first, but then when it stayed on and after lots of dissertations and time had dripped by people would make stories up about it, but the key would be that nothing could ever be proved absolutely as the cause of the sun shutting down for thirty seconds.

You stopped because you don’t have anything else to say. No more jokes.

No more words, Amorella. The words just stop. I suppose because I am not thinking anything. This is my usual state. Nothing to say because it has all been said already. No sense repeating. I am already repeating old classroom stories. I am getting old, too old for the classroom. I retired in 2003 and I should just let it go. I’ve crossed that bridge.

You are making this blog a moral issue?

Amorella, you are haunting me with my own well-worn teaching techniques. You have me doing ‘homework’ every day and posing ‘thought questions’ at me.

I thought ‘posting’ was fun, you said it was.

It is fun. I just shut down sometimes. This is one of those times. I don’t have anything else to say. I live on a twenty-four hour one way bridge.

Would you wish to walk the other way?

No, I’ve been there and I’ve done that. I cannot imagine consciously surviving death without a forest of tomorrows.