The Wanderer

The English word for planet comes from the Greek word for wanderer. I say this as an opening because compared to the planets, you are the Sun. I've had a lot more than the eight or nine (depending on how you feel about Pluto) planets 'wander' into and out of my personal solar system in my time on this planet, and most of them I was happy to see transit out of my gravitational field.  Yes, I am big enough to have my own gravitational field. However, that isn't really the point of this post, those 'wanderers' that stayed for a brief time in the solar system of my life, have gone, and are mostly forgotten. They were only 'inhabitable' for a while, and then became less so, some even became down right inhospitable.

With a little more forward thinking research, I should have been able to detect the inhospitable environments that many of these planets possessed. However, I am clearly not an ace in the field of forward thinking. To colonize the planet in front of me was, in the main, my immediate goal, and being an immediate goal became my only goal. It was only after the colony ships had been launched, and a base erected, supported, and established that I realized the environment(s) were unfriendly, unhealthy, or unsustainable.  Some times it was the like the coldest place in the 'real' solar system, those dark craters near the South Pole of the Moon, where the temperature can reach a brisk 397 degrees below zero. Or, at time it was similar to the hottest place, besides the core of the Sun, in this solar system, that being the core of Jupiter which cooks along at about 15,000 degree Kelvin. Hot, or cold, raining base metals, or as dry as dry can be, each of these places ultimately proved fatal to the colonists I sent to 'plant my flag' on their surface(s).

Then there is you, the Sun in this personal solar system of mine. Not that you are all sunshine all the time, no one that I can stand to be around for more than 5 consecutive minuets would be, but there you are the centre nonetheless. I share the same affliction that Ptolemy possessed, that being the belief that the Earth, and here I replace the Earth with myself, as being the centre of the universe. In many ways, because I am the person I am, that remains true. However, it took you 'wandering' into my solar system all those years ago to disabuse me of that notion. Granted you didn't accomplish this extraordinary feat overnight, and at first I had no real clue you had achieved it at all. It wasn't until you too transited out of my system that I begin to suspect what you had done.

Even then, it was just that the merest hint of a clue, something akin to the briefest of glances that we can risk in the general direction of the actual Sun, lest we blind ourselves with its light. Staring at the Sun is, in the main, not a particularly good idea.  It took a truly 'Earth' shattering event akin to my own personal Copernican revolution for me to realize, ever so slowly, what I should have seen from the beginning. The fact that I should have known from the start was not a comfort, nor was the fact that even before I realized it, I had gone through the most elaborate 'colonizing' effort of my life with you.  That should have been, to me at least, a much bigger clue that it actually was, but I remind you about my earlier comment about me and forward thinking. It just does not seem to be my strong suit.

However, while I may be a slow learner, I am still a learner, and while it has taken me exactly way too long to figure all of this out, I have managed to figure it out. As usual it is probably a day late and a dollar short, but being a fool's type of fool, here I am not the less. Looking forward and slightly to the left, and seeing the Sun in my system. The Sun that has been there the actual centre of this system since I first managed to 'wander' my own self into their path. The Sun that outshines all the other wandering planets I have come across in this great, cold universe that I call my life. The Sun that is still there burning as bright if not brighter than ever. Making itself clear as the nose on my face, as clear as a bell, and as clear as clear can be. Sometimes a little wandering is what it takes to realize how far from the centre you've gone, and how much fun it is to wander your way back to that warm, sunny, centre that you should never have left in the first place.