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Fellas!
The moon is moving away from Earth.
Right now!
As you're reading this. Every year it drifts another inch and a half farther from us.
A whole 3.8 cm.
At this rate, in ten years the moon will be a staggering… fifteen inches farther away than it is today.
Try not to panic.
Scientists confirmed this by bouncing lasers off reflectors left on the moon by Apollo astronauts decades ago. The measurements are so precise they can detect a movement smaller than the width of your thumb each year.
And yet despite slowly moving farther away, the moon still does something remarkable. Every single day it lifts and lowers entire oceans. The water rises and falls.
Again, and again.
Ancient civilizations built entire lunar calendars around its cycles.
Before smartphones reminded us where we needed to be, people looked upward. Ramadan begins and ends according to the moon. The Jewish calendar follows the moon.
Even Easter is tied to it; falling on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox.
Farmers planned planting, harvesting, fishing, and travel around its rhythms.
Before modern maps and GPS, sailors crossed oceans by studying the stars, the moon, and the tides. Entire civilizations found their way across the world by looking into the night sky.
That's a remarkable amount of trust to place in a single object.
Generations came and went. Empires rose and fell. Languages changed. Borders moved. Yet people kept looking up at the same moon, finding direction, measuring time, and organizing their lives around its cycles.
And perhaps that's why the moon has remained such a powerful teacher. Because sometimes what looks like an ending is simply another phase in the cycle.
Most people think of the moon in phases.
The crescent moon. The half moon. The full moon. Those names are useful, but they are also labels we created to describe a few recognizable points in a much larger process.
The named phases are simply snapshots. The actual reality is continuous change.
We often think in labels. Close. Distant. Connected. Estranged. Successful. Failed. But real relationships rarely move in such clean categories.
Most of the change happens in the in-between phases; the conversations that are a little less awkward than they used to be, the text messages that arrive a little more often, the moments of trust that grow so gradually they are easy to miss.
Just as the moon spends most of its existence between the phases we recognize, relationships spend most of their lives between the milestones we celebrate or mourn.
The labels may help us describe where we are, but they rarely tell the whole story. The real story is almost always unfolding in the gradual changes taking place between them.
The full moon is not the goal. It's merely a phase.
Human beings celebrate the full moon because it's bright, obvious, and impossible to miss. The moon itself treats it no differently than any other phase. It arrives. It leaves. The cycle continues.
A father might look at a great weekend with his child, a successful holiday, a deep conversation, or a memorable vacation and think, "This is it. This is what I've been working toward."
The moon would disagree. The point isn't the full moon. The point is that the cycle continues.
The conversation leads to another conversation. The visit leads to another visit. The trust leads to more trust. The relationship keeps moving.
Simple things have a habit of becoming powerful when they're repeated long enough.
A habit is a behavior.
A cycle is the pattern.
The habit is sending the text.
The cycle is reaching out, getting a response, building trust, and reaching out again.
The habit is going for a walk every morning.
The cycle is feeling better, having more energy, feeling more motivated, and going for another walk tomorrow.
The habit is setting aside twenty minutes to read.
The cycle is learning something new, seeing the world differently, making different choices, and becoming the kind of person who keeps learning.
One action. Many consequences. That's how positive cycles are built.
Through repeated behaviors that reinforce each other over time. Most of the things we want in life work this way.
A strong body is usually the result of thousands of workouts nobody remembers. A healthy bank account is often the result of years of small decisions repeated consistently.
A meaningful career is built one workday at a time. And close relationships are built the same way. The goal is to create the kind of habits that produce healthy cycles, then trust those cycles to carry you forward.
Because most good things in life are not destinations.
They are patterns that continue.
One phone call.
One ride together.
One joke.
One promise kept.
Individually, these things seem too small to matter. Collectively, they become a pattern.
And patterns become cycles.
Don't worry about the leap. Focus on the next step.
For thousands of years, human beings measured time by watching the moon disappear.
Think about that.
The moon would shrink. Become a crescent. Then a sliver.
Disappear entirely. Then return.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Ancient people built calendars around that certainty. They understood the difference between disappearance and return.
The moon was never gone. Only moving through another phase. A relationship enters a difficult season.
Things change. Circumstances shift.
Distance appears. Conversations become less frequent.
The instinct is to assume the story is ending. Perhaps the story is changing. Maybe what feels like disappearance is simply movement we don't fully understand yet.
Our ancestors understood that not every dark sky was an ending. Sometimes it was simply the beginning of a return.
And when the future feels difficult to see, trust the cycle.
Until next time
Barkim
“Quotes”
“Peace isn’t found by avoiding storms, but by learning which ones are worth walking through.”
“Most turning points begin as moments you almost ignored.”
“Strength is often built in seasons where nothing seems to be happening.”
“The path forward usually appears only after you take the first imperfect step.”
“What you hold onto shapes you just as much as what you release.”
“A quiet mind sees possibilities a restless one misses.”
“The future shifts the moment you choose a better pattern than the one before it.”
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