How does the road know the way?

Having established that I do not exist (see earlier posts),  I would now like to tern to some amazing consequences of the fact that we are not what we perceive ourselves to be.  One of the most amazing things to me is that we think we know so much about our world and the universe and yet we do not know the simplest things.  Take gravity for example.  There are many theories of what gravity is, and there are pretty thorough descriptions of how gravity works, but really... no one knows what it is!

What... I thought that since that apple hit Newton on the head we figured out what gravity is... nope!  They can not even agree if gravity happens instantaneously or if it has "gravitons" that must travel at the speed of light.  Humm... how can we do rocket science if we do not understand gravity???

When my 14 year old was 3 we were on a trip to Rocky Mountain National Park.  We had several of our extended family in Colorado and sort of made a tent city!  One afternoon some of us decided to take a drive over Trail Ridge Road to visit Granby.  That was a fun time and on the way home almost everyone "punched out".  My wife was driving and I was riding shotgun... trying to keep my eyes pried open to support her and keep her awake.

After we reached the high point on the ridge and started down I was thinking about the discussions I had been reading about the speed of gravity.  One would think that such a basic question would have an obvious answer... unfortunately, it seemed to have several obvious answers and was intuitively obvious to 3 different groups!  So, they seemed to dismiss each other as incompetent, or dumb... sad thing science...

Suddenly, I heard a small voice from way in the back of the mini van... "Daddy, where are we going?"  I did not want to disturb the sleepers, so I just quietly said "Home."  I heard no more, so I went back to my musing.  In a few minutes, again I heard, "Daddy?"  "Yes."  "Are we going to our house, or back to our tent house?"  I was amazed!  This little one really had a grasp of things!   She was clearly thinking through things as we watched the glory of God's creation streaming past our windows.  "We are going back to our tent house."  Silence... Musing... Silence... "Daddy?"

"Yes."  "How will we know how to get back to our tent house?"  Now I was really awake.  This little one was capturing all of my attention.  What was going on in that pretty little head?  I thought about the scene from "The Hiding Place" where Cory's father decides to only answer the direct question and not weigh the little one down with a long drawn out answer that would be far beyond the question.   So, I just said "We will follow the road."  Silence... Musing...  "Daddy?"

"Yes dear?" "How does the road know the way to the tent?"  ... a 3 year old? I thought for only a second, but for some reason, I felt like I was wading in a river and just stepping into a hidden pool that was much deeper than I was ready for.  "The road knows because it is already there."

I am not sure if she said anything else... my brain was about to pop out of my scull... that was it!  Gravity acted instantaneously, because it was just the expression of the interaction between things that were already there... sort of...  I could not focus what I was thinking... it was just out of reach... but I knew the vision was the key.  Over the next 11 or so years I remembered that moment in the car, the tiny voice  and the feeling of wondering if I would loose my balance as I stepped into the deep pool in my mind and drifted the rest of the way on the road back to the tent house.

I will try to unpack this a bit in a few posts.  I will touch on Fourier transforms, Cheerios, Entropy, Holograms and a few other bushes to run around. While I have read several books, articles, web sites since that day, I do not know of anyone thinking in exactly this way... so here it goes... baring my soul... be gentle.