SOLITON - STORYCUBES 9

---

---

SOLITON: a solitary wave (as in a gaseous plasma) that propagates with little loss of energy and retains its shape and speed after colliding with another such wave. Merriam-Webster

---

---

The Storycubes contest is something you'll want to check out, even if you produce in areas other than fiction. Winners are chosen from various disciplines so if you're into entering contests, click that link and head over there.

This week I am going off in a different direction with an essay. I've always been fascinated with the concept of solitons. Here I break the word into pieces and apply some thought to each. You should easily find the references to the dice I used: Rainbow, Reading Book, Earth, Treasure etc. I hope you find some value in these thoughts.

Image Credits

---

---

SOLITON

SOL
Wherever you are, sometime today or tomorrow go outside and check out the sun. Yeah, I could link to some really cool pics of Sol from NASA or The Royal Society, but the real thing is what I want to show you. I can’t link to that. You have to look up and just see for yourself. Don’t take anyone with you - go it alone. Stand there for a second, and just let your mind go wherever it wants to. Don’t just use your eyes, but listen and smell the world around you.

Take it in, as much of it as you can. Is it raining? Let it touch you. Is the wind blowing? Let it mess with your hair. Is there a rainbow? There's your treasure. Are there birds, flies, bees, ants and other crawling and flying creatures? Let them live, if just this once. You can tell them so, if you like. They will definitely appreciate your mercy.

Simply stand there a moment with your eyes open. Be silent, breathe; take it all in. You are a part of all this, and at least once in your life you need to feel that. If all the cities, all the technology, all the cars and trucks and planes and machines of civilization are gone tomorrow, you will still be a part of everything you see out there.

IT
There’s no way to really reproduce that world on your internet, you know. Not yet, at least. We can draw pictures; we can even create algorithms to imitate the wind’s effect on our penciled-in digital habitats. We can do some really amazing things with all this new technology. But nowhere is it possible to actually create anything that is real.

We know that, of course. Same as we know that Star Trek is just a TV show. And a really cheesy show, at that. Nevertheless, it’s still one of my, and millions of others’, favorites. We use a trick that’s called ‘suspension of disbelief’. We do it all the time when we're reading fiction. In fact, humans have been doing that for eons. It’s one of the things that sets us apart from the other animals on this planet.

We can choose to believe something that we know is not real. I don’t know of any other animal that has ever shown this trait. Sometimes I think that this one thing is what allowed humans to become dominant on Earth. Opposable thumbs and all the other differences I learned about in school? Each of those things can be found in some other animal. Our conquest of Earth is most likely not the result of a physical trait which only we have.

It seems to me that it’s this ability of humans not just to lie, but to lie believably to ourselves that is the real difference. We all do it every day, about little things and big things. I’m not going to name any here, just let that thought enter your mind as you’re standing outside taking in the real for that short moment. Open up to it. See what is around you. Listen to it. That world is a part of you. Let yourself be a part of it, at least for this moment.

ON
In the long span of your life, that’s all it is: a moment. Once you’ve come back to your machine, the moment is over and maybe soon forgotten. But maybe you got something there, over at the window, out on the balcony, or your porch, or the yard, or the crowd-filled street. Maybe you saw it, or heard it or smelled it and it sticks with you.

What you do with it is up to you. So few things are ‘up to you’ anymore. Have you noticed that as the number of our available choices increase, we seem more and more locked into what we’ve chosen before? From where we decided to live years ago, to the kind of work we do, to the social sites we use online, we lock ourselves into a view of us that we increasingly control less and less.

To be sure, we can choose to change any or all of it at any time. But doing that has consequences. If we move to another city, what becomes of our current relationships? If we change jobs, what happens to our sense of security? If we walk away from Facebook for steemit, what becomes of our online persona, our reputation? What about those we leave behind?

We stay where we are because we lie to ourselves. We cease to move forward and instead make ourselves believe we already have the best of all possible worlds. Whatever change we want, we convince ourselves that the costs are too high. Or that soon, we will do it, when the time is more ‘right’. We put off the decision, and that is our decision. But we lie and say that we’re ‘thinking about it’ or ‘planning’.

Sometimes it seems to me that there’s a button in each of us. It’s the ON/OFF switch for our possibilities. When we believe our own lies, we are putting that button in the OFF position. When we see clearly, when we are most closely connected with what exists naturally around us, when we choose to believe what we know to be real, we are ON.

SOLITON
Walk out, into the sun. Find your place. Choose your path. Believe in yourself, because you know you are real.

---

---