The Gravity of the Situation -mildly updated

Everything they told us in school about the earth being held in orbit by the pull of the sun's mass is false.

What's really happening is that the sun's mass is warping space/time, creating something like a big indentation in a rubber sheet that causes the earth to be trapped in a falling orbit around the sun.

Gravity's not so much pulling the earth as it is distorting the dimension around us.The bigger the object's mass, the more far-reaching the indentation and the harder it is to escape its attraction. Like a marble spinning around the inside of a toilet bowl, till it finally loses speed and goes down the drain.

Once a star dies and becomes a super-dense black hole, its gravity is so severe that not even light can escape it ... hence the name Black Hole. Every object affected by a black hole's gravity is trapped and eventually consumed by it.

You can tell Christmas is around the corner not because Glad Tidings and Peace on Earth are everywhere, but because BIG SEASONAL SALES! are. It's as though Americans, who have more stuff than any other people on the planet, suddenly wake up the day after Thanksgiving each year convinced they're either out of stuff, need more stuff or are simply tired of their old stuff.

Who was it who said "Money makes the world go around"?

Look around you next time at the mall: people aren't happy or merry, they're grim-faced and clinch-fisted, cross-eyed with anxiety to find the very best deals on stuff they don't need so they'll have room left over on charge cards to buy even more stuff they don't need.

And then spend the rest of the year being miserable about being in debt.

I've seen people living on the edge of starvation, with rags for clothes, who smile and gladly share their food with a stranger without asking for anything in return. Yet "generous" is hardly a word we associate with investment bankers or business tycoons even though they have all the stuff they need.

Money has no gravity for people who've never known it, yet its pull on greedy people who are always looking to have "just one dollar more" is unmistakable and distorts every dimension of their lives.

Materialism focused on having stuff creates a pull that grows exponentially with size, leading to wanting even more stuff ... to the point where we can become trapped in a financial orbit around an irresistible dead star called Debt.

Or like the marble circling inside the toilet bowl, with nowhere to go but down.