My cup of tea

When teaching students about engines and energy and power, talk invariably turns to great cars. What I try to get across to my students, though, is that if a great ride is measured only by acceleration and speed, then we're severely limiting the pleasure possible from the experience of driving.

I'm sitting in my seat here holding a cup of hot tea and enjoying the warmth it spreads through my core. There's so much sensation to this feeling, so much pleasure, and I wonder if there's even more...

So I think about the gas I burned on our stove to heat up the pot containing the water. This gas, American or Canadian produced and transported, is older than the oldest dinosaurs (probably), about 300 million years. Way back then, as now, the sun was up in the sky pumping photons to earth, where the photons were powering plant and algae growth. Those plants died, fell, and decomposed, and gravity and those 300 million years turned the sun's photons into natural gas.

Let there be light. 

So the heat in my belly from my cup of tea began its life in the thermonuclear furnace of the sun itself a very long time ago. And the physical sensation now has intellectual, emotional, and spiritual partners. 

There's more to all of our experiences, if we just look and feel.