What I learn from Orbit

How is the Earth not bored? Earth has seen the same star for almost 5 billion years. Does Earth not wonder what it’s like to spin like Mars? Is the Earth never curious about the jewelry of Saturn?

I stopped wondering and asked her.

She smiled at my youth, my naivete. She told me the path is different every day. The time it takes is the same, roughly but she’s always on the move. She reminds me she’s on a constant path forward, expanding with an expanding cosmos. She reminds me that she’s changed her body more times and in more ways than she can count. That she’s believed in entire societies that I will never hear about. She tells me that she’s made it this long because she’s kept this ritual. This is her freedom, her tether. She’s not chained to the Sun, she’s freed by it. This grounds her.

The brief visitors of comets who obey no rituals see themselves burnt about. They live fast and die young. They make no true progress. They have no central drive. She tells me that the core of her and those around her is what gives them names. They tell a story about a comet, they write books about us.

What I see as sameness, she sees as discipline.