There is revolution followed by evolution. A two step process that repeats endlessly for everyone and everything that ever existed and will ever exist.

When we say revolution we mean an event in the life of something which can be characterized as a major change, where there is a definite, identifiable difference in the structure or very nature of the thing. As an example we can say a tree undergoes two revolutions per year. One occurs in the autumn when the leaves fall off and the other in the spring when they grow back.

Evolution is the time between revolutions, usually characterized by slow, incremental growth and development. Using the tree example again, the evolutionary period from spring to summer finds the leaves (initially a result of the spring time revolution) growing bigger, undergoing photosynthesis and feeding the tree. We won't digress into the leaves revolution and evolution cycles. We will simply say that the leaves also have these cycles as do each of the individual parts of the leaf.

A person undergoes a revolution at birth, at puberty, at parenthood, at death. In between we evolve, learn, understand, hate our jobs. A rock, once molten magma, cools and fractures during its revolution. It then evolves, ever so slowly in the soil and air, into whatever size and shape it is when we stumble upon it. It may again undergo a revolution if we chose to pick it up and throw it into a stream. Its evolution now taking place amidst running water.

A shoe lace, a grasshopper, a molecule of uranium, a drop of water, the planet Neptune, these all follow the cycle of revolution and evolution. That sentence alone qualifies as an amazing statement, yet there are more astounding similarities among those and all other things which exist in the universe. Not only are our lives made up of the same cycles of revolution and evolution, our entire physical beings are made up of the same building blocks. All of us in existence, the rocks, trees, and shoe laces, are made of cells, which are made of molecules, which are made of atoms, which are made of protons, neutrons and electrons. Which themselves follow the cycle of revolution and evolution.

A lost electron from one atom is captured by another, one element changes into another. Two elements come together to form a molecule which evolves into a cell. Which in conjunction with other molecules and cells forms a tree which grows and dies and fragments and decays and loses electrons which form new elements which join to form molecules and cells which grow into something else, which is different from the tree yet exactly the same.

Is it mundane? Absolutely not. It is a humbling revelation, a concept difficult to grasp, an epiphany. It is nothing less than an argument for the existence of God.

Is it an aspect of everyday life that typically goes unnoticed? Absolutely. It is taken for granted, it has no practical value. It is trivia.

The thought of all things being made from the same substances and following the same patterns of existence is revolutionary. It opens a new world of understanding. We look at rocks, trees, and shoe laces differently. In fact we look at everything differently, until we begin to look at everything the same.

And so the pattern continues.

Michael Morrissey is a father of three, spouse of one and faceless cog to thousands of co-workers. He lives and works somewhere in Northwestern Connecticut.