Bonus Post! (or 3 + 4 = 7)

So I was thinking about the crazy things that my mind has been thinking about lately and I remembered one thought about the teachings of our culture specifically when it comes to the transition from Sky to Earth and how we draw the line separating the two.

We are taught at a young age that the sky is everything down to the ground. In our crayon depictions of our worlds, we are told to extend the blue that we place above all the way down to the green that we place below.

But as we live our lives in these worlds, we don't think of the sky as being just anything above the grass. We say that tall trees and buildings "reach up into the sky". We say that a level-headed person is "down to Earth". This language (among others) establishes a definite space separating the sky, "above", from the Earth, "below".

The focus of my inquiry is on that third party in our world. What exactly is that white space that children leave on the page between the blue sky and green grass? It is in this white space that human life occurs. This is where we place our double-square-windowed homes and our stick-families. So, what is it in us that separates life from its surroundings?

To answer that question with a question: what do the sky and ground have in common? They are perceived as pure space, being outside of time. We view the sky and the ground as eternal constants. They always have been, always will be. But the stuff in the white space is temporary, ever-changing. Even as children, we realize this sense of fleeting life and so we separate our temporary selves from the eternal around us. But our teachers tell us to fill in the white space with Sky from above. And so we do. And so we should. Why? Because the connection between sky and earth is what makes life more beautiful.