My Jar Theory

You get a big jar, and fill it 3/4 of the way with 1 inch ball bearings. Then take one pound of sand, your choice of color, 'cause I'm easy like that, and pour it on top of the ball bearings. Much of the sand may remain on the top.

Now, start to shake the jar gently, and watch the sand fall around the bearings. All the sand flows downward. Some of it finds it's way quickly. Other grains of sand get there later. Some grains of sand never reach the bottom at all.

Those grains may get caught in a scratch in one of the bearings. It may stick to a bearing because of moisture, static electricity, any number of reasons. As the jar shakes and vibrates, so do the bearings, and so does the sand.

This is how I perceive life.

The sand, (us) all start from the same place. We have obstacles (ball bearings) to get around, they change our path. We would normally fall straight downward, non-stop if it weren't for the obstacles. Not all obstacles are horrible things. They're changes in our direction. Sometimes we can choose how to navigate our way through them, sometimes we are knocked to the side. No matter what direction we go, we are still moving downward (forward) through the jar (life).

Again, not all grains make it to the bottom. This is normal. We never really leave anywhere or anything with 100% of ourselves intact. There is always something left behind. A carbon footprint, someone we loved, someone that loved us. We leave traces and marks behind us like the faint trail of sand that can be followed back toward the top of the jar.

To me, this trail is time. We can never go and get it back. It has left us forever.

So, as we get to the bottom of the jar, there may be an imperceptible change in the amount of sand (from top to bottom) and we'd need exact counts and measures to really add that up, but why try? Each time we do this experiment, factors change. Is it a humid day? Is it the same type of sand. Temperature, how hard the jar is vibrated each time, and any amount of other factors can change this experiment. But it's basically the same result each time.

The sand, moving through the bearings to the bottom of the jar is life. Trace amounts left behind is time. We can elaborate on all this another time, to show what movement actually is and how I feel about that subject.

(more to come)

- MDG