It is just one degree. One point along the temperature gradient. One point in time as the temperature rises or falls. Above, and all water falls as rain, soaks into the ground, runs along the surface until it finds a crack or crevice or opening of some sort, and then follows the pull of gravity down into the earth. Some flows on to creeks that fill streams that fill rivers, some that soaks in seeps back out of the ground on the banks to feed the streams and creeks. It is clear and flowing, moving. 
Below that point, all water falls as snow or ice pellets or sleet or some other form of solid water, and it drops, lands, and stays there. Solid, accumulating, piling up. Deeper and deeper. Unless the winds grabs and moves it to another place, still above the surface of the earth, so stop and stay somewhere else.
Raining raining raining bam snowing snowing snowing. The earth goes from dark, saturated, absorbing all water and and much of the light to BAM white, bright, resisting the snow that piles up above ground and reflects back bright light from the sky.
One day, all is brown and tan and grey and black and the next, it is bright glistening shining white. Everything is like that, but we seldom see the change points quite so obviously. A word changes the way you think about an issue, a person. A moment, a single event, a single act, changes forever the course of a day, a life, a civilization. To see those moments and accept and adapt and adjust is a gift, a talent, a skill, and on that can hinge ones happiness or ones very survival.
4 comments:
Just ask Tiger "Cheetah" Woods about that, eh?
I liked this: "Everything is like that, but we seldom see the change points quite so obviously. A word changes the way you think about an issue, a person. A moment, a single event, a single act, changes forever the course of a day, a life, a civilization. To see those moments and accept and adapt and adjust is a gift, a talent, a skill, and on that can hinge ones happiness or ones very survival."
You may have heard about Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference":
Tipping points are "the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable." Gladwell defines a tipping point as a sociological term: "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point." The book seeks to explain and describe the "mysterious" sociological changes that mark everyday life. As Gladwell states, "Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread like viruses do." The examples of such changes in his book include the rise in popularity and sales of Hush Puppies shoes in the mid-1990s and the precipitous drop in the New York City crime rate after 1990.
I haven't read it, but there is more info here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tipping_Point
Gladwell's writing is excellent. His other books (released after Tipping Point) are also a great read (Blink, Outliers and What the Dog Saw).
Ol' Malc has a great gift for hindsight and for writing about it such that you think it was the greatest most profound thought ever had. But here's the rub to me: Anyone can look back at the great Beanie Baby phenomonon and see what it is that made it happen. Yet no one can harness that 'what happened then' into anything predictive that will recreate the success. The things he writes about are interesting observations, but not useful in making anything happen in ones business future. In that respect, these business self-help books are not useful as anything more than entertainment, except to help the one business that is Malcolm's writing business.
Boy... you might consider actually reading his books before you flame off on them... I don't consider his books to be "business self-help" books but I could cite several examples where applying his line of thinking or utilizing his thoughts would be very helpful (but I won't).
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