REFER TO GREY: Contemplations by Robert Greigos © 2007-2024

Calm is a relatively rare thing in nature. Almost anywhere you look, from the microscopic to the subatomic, out to the cosmic or back to the everyday, the world we live in is in constant, sometimes violent motion. Just sitting in front of our computers we move at close to a thousand miles per hour. (The Earth is roughly 8000 miles in diameter and spins one full rotation every 24 hours. Hence, any point on the Earth's surface is in constant motion. At the equator, the distance traveled each day would be roughly pi times the Earth's diameter or 24000 miles, a speed of approximately 1000 miles per hour.) But the thing is, dependent upon the kind of life we live and the state of our mental health, most of us value and even relish calm. We relish it for the sense of predictable well-being it imparts. It puts us at ease. We feel safe, unharried.

Those who suffer depression perhaps experience too much calm. They find themselves stuck in moods they cannot shake. The mediators of mood, neurotransmitters, have failed to metabolize. Switches are stuck. Reset has failed. Gloom prevails. Exercise is always prescribed because it gets the juices flowing, helping to metabolize recalcitrant neurotransmitters.

Experiments in sensory deprivation result in severe stress on the health of the brain. It's a problem that must be solved before humans will ever be able to traverse the vast bland distances of space. Why we continuously fail to ensure an intellectually rich environment for all our children to develop within is beyond understanding. And that we insist on placing social misfits into intellectually impoverished prison environments hoping to improve their behavior is also mystifying.

Business people desire calm in markets because it yields predictable profits. But on the other hand, speculators love volatility because it increases opportunity for windfall. Consumers are stuck in the middle, furiously trying to maintain stability within house and home as prices, jobs, weather, health, politics, and market news fluctuate. A viable sustainable zone of comfort is desired by all, but may in fact only be achievable briefly during such moments as watching a peaceful sunset with friend or loved one.

May you regularly find such rejuvenating moments of calm at least a few times each week.