The Turning Point

A turning point is a place where what is cannot return to what was. It is a shift in thought and action.  A dramatic turning point we experience every twenty-four hours is the transit from light to dark. Fearing the sun would never rise again was so overwhelming that it fomented human sacrifice.  That was a potent turning point on multiple levels; dark to light, life to death, despair to hope, and destruction to restoration.

We are not always in sync with turning points.  If you are unready for the shift in consciousness or the change in politic, the transition will be difficult.  Civil wars have been fought because of this. Homelands and loved ones can disappear in violent temblors and washed away by horrible tsunamis.  Is your will strong enough to keep you focused on a plan to keep you safe during such vicissitudes?

The key word to remember is “resilience.”  If the turning point is not flowing with you, just pretend you are flowing with the turning point.  American politicians are adept at this.  When the tide of popular opinion turns against their “platform,” they pretend not to rebuild it.  They inform constituents thus, “there has been no change in my position, just a misunderstanding of my platform" (and the words that built it).  Reconfiguring his thoughts to form slightly different ideas that are more in line with the shift in attitude, the leader has made a deft adjustment.

A good movie will tell a story with layers of turning points that produce tension.  Odom is a champion athlete who loses his left leg in a traffic accident.  To survive, he and his small child beg on the streets.  People know him but from where?  His condition makes him unrecognizable.  His pride will not allow him to be remembered. Odom sleeps in a cardboard box under a culvert below the stadium where his athletic prowess once was dazzling.  His coach tried to keep in touch but drifted away.   His mother is distraught and doesn't know what to do.  Odom has fallen beneath the sidewalk that has become his home. But there is a woman who still loves him and knows where to find him.  This is a true story.  Turning points are not for the delicate.

The arrival of a newborn is a magical beginning.  Everyone in the family is changed.   All must adjust to a new personality and a different perspective.  Each person's position in the family is in transit.  A new whole, a new family is created.  

At the opposite end of life, death is jarring and seems sudden. The questions it foists upon us individually are awesome.  What happened?  Where did he go?  Will I be next?   The transitions at birth are stripped away when a family member dies.  There is a gap in the familial fabric.   Again everyone considers their position and their mortality.  The turning point has been met with a crushing realization that life is frail.

The discovery that earth, and all that populate it, is not the center of the universe has inflicted a diabolical blow to the human ego.  We should consider unthinking this thought and restoring the turning point back to where it was before Galileo.  Abolishing this idea would enhance sleep patterns and restore our self worth.  It could be a new chapter in the Book of Denial that says humans lived amongst dinosaurs and the earth is only seven thousand years old.  If we can rethink Pluto and revoke its planetary citizenship, why not give ourselves back the center spot in the universe.  Life would be easier.