The Time It Takes for the Ocean to Circle the Earth

“The ocean never stops traveling around the world. Slowly descending from the polar regions, some parts become ice, while others become saltier and colder, sinking to the bottom. Do you know how long it takes for the ocean to circle the world?”

“How long does it take?” He was clearly teasing me, but I didn’t mind. So I smiled and said, “A thousand years.”

The time it takes for the ocean to circle the world cannot be as long as a thousand years. “A thousand years” signifies an endless stretch of time. But just as they say “a thousand years is like a day, and a day is like a thousand years,” there are concepts that go beyond the bounds of time. The ever-changing nature of human life is one such example. What might take a thousand years can happen overnight, and what seems like it would take just a day can take a thousand years.

ocean, time, endless