Are you ready to switch off your screens and ponder or discuss another writing/conversation prompt from my friend Tyrean Martinson’s book? Here’s MY take on it.
It is 57 degrees Fahrenheit and raining as I’m writing this. I have no clue what it will be like when you are getting to read this article. Because temperatures vary. I’m not even talking climate change. We could start with as little as the difference between the U.S. and my mother country. 57 degrees there would be unbelievably hot, as they measure temperature in Celsius. But if you calculate 57 F into the European measuring unit, you get 13.8 degrees Celsius. Isn’t that a weird temperature?!
Scientist Celsius defined the freezing point of water as 0 degrees and that of boiling water as 100 degrees. Obviously, he didn’t think of altitude differences where the boiling temperature of water varies. Scientist Fahrenheit made the human being the measure of all and decided that 96 degrees was the average body temperature (it was corrected to 98.6 degrees later). The lower end of the scale, 0 degrees, was an equal mixture of salt and ice, which tuned the melting point of ice/freezing point of water to 32 degrees. No need to say that sciences internationally use Celsius; why compare brine with a human being?!
As the weather is turning cooler and fall has set in meteorologically on September 1, I realize that I perceive the change in temperature differently in the second half of the year than in the first. Whereas in spring 60 degrees felt comparatively warm, now I am donning another layer of clothing. Whereas I like iced coffee when it’s hot outside, I prefer hot coffee when it’s cooling down. Whereas I create cold soups and salads during hot summer days, the colder season is certainly loved by me for the opportunity to explore stews and soups.
Only the other day, a Facebook friend of mine posted budding daffodils along with the question, “When will they finally bloom?” You may have guessed it – she’s a writer in New Zealand where meteorologic spring starts when fall begins in the Northern hemisphere. Her Christmas will, thus, take place in summer weather, although they celebrate it on the same date as we do in the Northern half of the globe.
Which makes me think that if we are perceiving the same temperature differently at different times of the year and others experience their seasons literally upside down, how dare we to expect everybody to have the same choices and opinions about the same facts?! As temperatures vary, so do people. A lot. And though we are measured in (differing) units of length, weight, temperature, and even grades (some of them bestowed rather randomly as they don’t measure intelligence), we are all individuals with varying perceptions and emotions per being.
A scale is but a measuring unit. So are standards. As temperatures break records, so do people. As temperatures make us uncomfortable one way or another, so do people. And what might be the upside for one, might be the downside for another.
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