At the End of our Rope?
If I put the following question to children playing outside in the summer, or to random people on the street, regardless of age, I suspect the line of inquiry would sound like this.
When do you think the earth is closest to the sun: summer or winter?
Is this a trick question?
No, just a matter-of-fact kind of question.
Well then that’s simple. We must be closest to the sun in the summer because that is when it is hottest.
In fact, it would appear illogical to assume otherwise. The truth of the matter, however, runs counter to normal reasoning. And that is because summers and winters have little to do with our distance from our solar furnace, but everything to do with the tilt of the axis around which our planet rotates.
As the diagram clearly shows, our planet’s 23 degree tilt pitches the northern hemisphere towards the sun’s most direct rays in the summer, and away from that same energy in the winter. It just so happens that for us living in America, that lean occurs when we are at our furthest point, the aphelion, of our 365 ¼ day trek around our life-sustaining star.
Of often thought that the earth resembles a ball tethered to the sun, twirling us over a multi-million mile elliptical orbit. Following this comparison, we are now within a few days of being “at the end of our rope” so to speak. That will occur on July 4, a coincidence whose symbolism invites all sorts of ponderings. And on that day we will behold once again the brilliance of Newton’s mathematical formulations about gravity. For this should prove itself, once again, as it draws us back into orbit. If all goes according to formula, our spin cycle will take us on a sixth month path to our next revolutionary turning point on January 3, 2024. Unbelievably we will likely be donning mittens and hats, perhaps even shoveling snow, as we navigate this closest of encounters with good old Sol.
But the question troubling me is this: will July 4 come off as planned? What if there is a statute of limitations on Newton’s insight about those forces beyond our control upon which we so depend? Upon reaching the end of our orbital rope next week, will we be gradually pulled back to the sun in the same way our cosmic dance partner has drawn us closer for the last 16 billion years or so? Or will our planet choose to leave orbit, its exit velocity, aka centrifugal force, overmatching the power of gravity to hold us in orbit. I’m betting on the former scenario, neither expecting nor desiring the unthinkable alternative that truly would be an apocalypse now, or whenever it might happen.
At the end of one’s rope is a rather harrowing place to be. Have you ever been there? I suspect most of us have, although my own experiences with rope ends have been few and far between. Much akin to other places we sometimes visit, such as our wits end, or with a last straw held tightly in our hands, being at the end of our rope is a metaphor that continues to evoke frustration, helplessness or desperation whenever we use it. And oh how it is in vogue these days. Just think about how many wars and rumors of war keep us on edge these days. Or how much rancor and duplicity fills our public speech. And how many divisions and tremors threaten to tear our national house asunder, or how many existential threats hang over our heads—from climate change to human migration to lawless cities, to fentanyl seeping across our borders, to the growing dread of our imminent takeover by our own AI inventions. Who cannot but think that some “end of our rope” moment is at hand? Doesn’t it feel as if too many of our moorings to age-old value centers have been cut, threatening to propel us beyond orbits in which tradition and common sense have kept us from spiraling into the uncertainties of societal chaos?
Now I am not generally an alarmist, nor one given to speculations about troubling signs of the times. I don’t subscribe to eschatological forecasts about our doom, whether uttered by religious, economic, ecological or technological chicken-littles. At the same time I am cautious about putting too much stock in the recurring patterns of historical cycles, seeing them more as potentialities rather than inevitabilities. So while on July 4, 2023 we will find ourselves travelling through the furthest reaches of our 584 million mile solar orbit, I expect we are not at the end of our rope. Life is certain to go on, and though likely it will not be exactly as we have heretofore known it, it will be more like it has always been than like what so many fear in their prognostications. Just as centrifugal forces that push us away from our home star are countered by opposing, centripetal gravitational pulls, the winds of cultural change will always be balanced by those more traditional philosophies and values to keep us in life-sustaining orbit.
Of one thing I do think there is some certainty. However far we may swing from our orbital center, we are bound to come back in due time. For like a pendulum whose bob seeks equilibrium no matter how wide its trajectory or speed of its travel, our planet and all who dwell therein are governed by powers that none of us, or our kin, can alter or destroy. I trust in that, even at a time when trusting anything seems a bit foolish. But with 4.5 billion years of precedent to look back on, I think my faith is well placed. And I doubt I’m alone in this. Perhaps that was what our unknown ancestors tried to capture in assembling those immense standing stones on Salisbury Plain a few thousand years ago. Seeing rays of sunlight pierce through the rock columns at the same time and in the same place as those who assembled them bears witness to the constancy of rhythms in which our earth and our sun seem eternally committed.
I guess whenever we are at the end of our rope, be it astronomical, emotional, political or cultural, the best advice continues to be: hang on!
