Yesterday the TV was playing in the background and I thought I heard Homer Simpson say one of what I thought was the most prolific quotes of all time.

“Why can’t all hills go down?”

This gave me cause to pause. Homer certainly has a point. Why do hills have to go up? Doesn’t that just make things harder?

I smile writing this.

Why can’t all hills go down is the question, and a good one at that.

And here is the truth. (Are you ready, Homer?)

All hills do go down. On both sides. Every day. 24/7.

All hills go down. It just depends on your perspective on the matter. Or, perhaps better put, where you are coming from — or going to.

If you are at the top of the hill, no matter which way you look, your hill gestures downward.

If you are at the bottom of the hill, the opposite is true.

For most of life, we go up and and we go down in equal increments. That’s physics — and gravity. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Physically, yes. Mentally, no.

Because climbing a hill can be just as easy and rewarding as descending one. Going up can be equally as beneficial as sliding down. It’s all how you see it.

It’s all how you experience it. Ups and downs. Downs and ups.

All hills go down. But they also go up. The same hill may be headed both ways at any given day or moment, depending on who is climbing or descending. 

This is because the hills themselves don’t change. Read that again. The. Hills. Don’t. Change.

We do.

We change. Our perspective changes. 

It’s up to us. And only us.

A glass that is half full or half empty. Skies mostly blue or partially cloudy. Life starting at 40 or just beginning. 

Hills going up or down.

Take your pick, because it is your choice. 

It’s a choice each of us makes. Every day: to put one foot in front of the other and believe we are moving down the hill — whether gravity is against us or not. Belief in where we are going is half the battle.

More than half.

We climb and we descend, and in-between we breathe and grow. We see the sun rise and set, the moon go through her cycles. The world changes and we keep moving — up and down, down and up.

Through it all, we find our truth in what surrounds us. Is the hill leading us upward, or downward? Was today easy — or hard? What will tomorrow bring?

How will we choose to perceive that?

Why can’t all hills go down? I guess it’s a rhetorical question because they all do. They already do.

At the start of this column, I posed this question from Homer Simpson. But you know what? I can’t find this particular quote anywhere on the Internet, so perhaps it’s the Mandela effect, or I made it up, or something even weirder than that.

Either way, having all hills go down is worth a thought — or even two, because if you learn to see life that way, maybe the hills you face will change their slope and their scape.

Thanks, Homer.

— Jill Pertler’s column Slices of Life appears regularly in the Times. She can be reached at 

slicescolumn@gmail.com.