The Centripetal Road

Centripetal energy is energy directed toward the center. When one swings a ball on a string around in a circle, centrifugal force is the weight or force of the ball wanting to fly out and away; centripetal force is the tension on the string holding the ball from flying off. Flying away is centrifugal / going toward the center is centripetal.

Much of the energy in my daily experience is centrifugal: it is energy directed away from my center. Most news is centrifugal, whether it be on an earth scale (global warming), regional scale (the war in Iraq), or local/intimate scale (a friend with cancer down the street). Many daily tasks are tugs on that string (cooking food is centrifugal, but eating food is centripetal). A rich conversation with a stranger, an unexpected moment where some aspect of life reminds me of beauty: these are centripetal. They move me toward my center. Like footprints in the snow, centripetal tracks reveal where I have been on my journey; I am hoping the stories here will remind us of the richness of each person's journey.

An intuition engine

My intention is to accept the challenges of leading a life led by my intution. It is relatively easy to drive on the rational road. Our culture supports this worldview. What follows here are steps, and perhaps stumbles, on the less traveled road. Welcome.

Robert Frost (1874–1963): TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;	5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,	10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.	15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.	20