We talk about reinvention. I once was this. Now, I’m this. And it’s so because I made it happen.
I didn’t.
Life rolls on with a will we can’t control. You think it was your choice to “invent” the person you are? That there was some grand plan? A blueprint to follow? A conscious effort to create someone new?
There wasn’t.
I look out my window and see trees sway in the breeze. I experience one of those semantic satiation moments, only instead of a word or phrase losing its meaning with repetition, it’s the wind. What is the wind? Where did it come from? The air just … moves. That can’t be real. Wind can’t be real. A minute ago, I took the wind for granted. Now, I can’t comprehend the fact of its existence.
I mean, yes. The coriolis effect, the interplay between warmth and coolness on the Earth, the planet’s rotation, the sun’s gravitational embrace, the sea and the land … yes. All of that explains the physical fact of the wind.
But what if instead the breeze that moves the trees out my window was born 10,000 years ago from the dying sigh of an exhausted Mesopotamian hunter-gatherer?
I don’t know. It’s just the wind.
Carter Gaddis, Writer & Editor 