Monday Musings & Motivations – Part 67 – Feeling Centered in Chaos 

Do you ever think that the world has gone off its axis a bit? It feels that way sometimes, doesn’t it – that odd “off” feeling that we, as a collective body, feel these days. 

I asked myself that question one day after listening to the news, the discourse, the general hub-bub, never-ending, seemingly no solution arguments that thrum in the background – if we let it and if we decide to turn on that box that keeps us informed or misinformed.

It’s a catch-22 – listen or bury your head in the sand? I don’t care what “side” you resonate with, and I sincerely don’t understand how we got to a place where we feel as if we have to pick a side. I won’t and I don’t. We are all humans just trying to figure things out, and the best thing we can do is to be kind and empathetic to each other. 

That’s all I have to say about that. 

Research about that spinning off the axis thing

According to a 2021 article from India Times, the earth “tilted dangerously” about 84 million years ago scientists have found, and it may happen again.

According to these really smart people who study this on a daily basis, Earth will keep on tilting on its axis “from time to time.” The last time it did that, it was like Jurassic Park on Mother Earth, vegan/vegetarian big boys and girls and some scary carnivores roaming while the Earth tilted a full 12 degrees. This has been recorded according to the article. Who recorded it? I’m not disputing it. I just wonder, how did they find that? Writings or cave-people graphics sketched somewhere on a cave wall? 

I’m showing my ignorance and I’m guessing they have all sorts of equipment which determined what happened 84 million years ago, and possibly the Earth did indeed tilt 12 degrees, which I guess is a lot for our beautiful blue orb. There is most likely a measuring tool one uses to track such things, and how one does that is on my research more list. 

Fast forward to now where, from what I’ve heard, scientists are trying to bring back some of those Jurassic inhabitants via cloning (not the same Earth-tilt-watching scientists, but some geneticists in a lab somewhere who want to clone wooly mammoths and “long-lost species” and bring them back because their theory is that those giant furry elephants could be our “climate saviors”), and since the Earth-tilt-watching scientists believe we are facing the biggest challenge because the Earth has been stable for the last 100 million years, we have to do something. 

So…what do we do? 

Since scientists say that the Earth is in a back-and-forth dance and that if and when it tilts, it “snaps back into its old position quickly.” They’ve even come up with a term for that happening: “cosmic yo-yo.” If I ever have a band, that’s what I’m naming it. 

A June 2023 New York Times article suggested the Earth began going “off-kilter” around the turn of the millennium. No one knows why, but as we humans love to pontificate about such things, it could be because of polar ice sheets melting and that melting could influence the Earth’s rotation. Add that, the writer suggests, to all of us using water to pump out to fields for crops to grow and for us to use in our households — this is a factor in the aforementioned off-kiltering. As I write this, my washing machine is getting a load of laundry clean and spiffy. 

I do, however, conserve because that’s the way I was raised. Growing up in the country, I was taught to respect the land, nature, and all the wondrous things in it and about it. 

There is much citing of data in the NYT article, such as “groundwater overuse,” and the amount of space left underground that water can or cannot hold. In addition, we have “Earth wobbles,” as well as the cosmic yo-yo which adds up to our axis wandering and wobbling, in minute increments. Though we can’t feel it, these studies suggest this is happening. 

I’m clumsily summing up these two well-written articles, but the bottom line is the Earth may tilt again, and our axis may be wandering. And, it’s a possibility that the shifts in groundwater may or may not be a factor, along with other thousands of variables in how our planet does what it does. 

Creeks will rise, floods will happen, and storms will come. We can do the best we can to preserve the astounding beauty that is Mother Earth. And to those suffering from some of the inexplicable incidences that occur on our planet, my attempt at a light-hearted spin on the changes in temps, latitudes and attitudes is not meant to show disrespect for what you are experiencing.

Nature will right itself. It always has and it always will. 

Be happy, get outside if you can and enjoy the miracle that is Earth. It is there, every day, for us to do just that. 

Happy Monday, everyone.