Module 6 Personal Reflection: Resisting inertia

The risk in writing about something you don’t know much about is that others will soon come to share that awareness. I am willing to take that risk about a physics-related topic so I can write about a human-related topic. One of the most enduring scientific anecdotes involves an insight of some gravity from Sir Isaac Newton, provoked by a falling apple. I wish it would have been a fig, for obvious cookie marketing reasons, but the falling fruit from the sky is alleged to have been an apple. And by the way, I find it interesting that beyond science stories, for some reason, apples also play a prominent role in stories of medicine and religion. Eat an apple a day and doctors are miraculously repelled. And though some may bicker about the precise fruit eaten by Adam and Eve in the Garden, it’s just easier to picture an apple being bitten rather than a banana being peeled. (Although Eve could have surely upped the ante on the seduction scale with the banana, and Freud...well, I think we know what his focus of fixation would have been.)

Perhaps we’ll return to this topic and get to the core issue at another time, but for now, let us remember another contribution of Sir Isaac Newton that did not involve an apple and a near-concussion. Our ideas about inertia are often traced back to two laws of physics: an object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion. An external force is needed to overcome inertia, either to get something moving or bring something to a stop. Albert Einstein said, “Nothing happens until something moves.”

I first came across the intersection of inertia and relationships in a family theories course when we were discussing cohabitation, specifically couples who start dating, may not have a deep level of commitment, but after a while they move in together for convenience. They begin to share a lease, a pet, perhaps mutual purchases of appliances and furniture, and before you know it, they get married. Some researchers call this “sliding instead of deciding.” It isn’t a decision of deep intention, it just seems like the thing that is supposed to happen next.

Some couples who perhaps should not have gotten married, might not have gotten married if they hadn’t moved in together and begun blending their accumulations. If they had continued dating but living in separate homes, they might have been able to end the relationship easier and earlier, or at least they might not have moved so quickly to the wedding chapel. By living together, they increased their constraints for staying in a relationship (even if it wasn’t a great relationship) and they found themselves saying “I do” before they realized what they had done.

Relationship inertia is not limited to cohabiting couples. Long-term married partners may find themselves coasting rather than actively and intentionally deepening their commitment to each other. He may just be resting in his La-Z-Boy recliner or he may BE the lazy boy who needs to get out of the recliner and engage more fully with his family. It is easy in all relationships to go through the motions, move from one phase of life to the next, and before we know it we may find ourselves saying “Goodbye, I miss you now that you are gone, and I am sorry that I missed you when you were here.”

It is also possible for individuals to fall into relationship inertia with themselves, mindlessly moving through life on auto-pilot, perhaps simply doing what others want them to do. It is clearly easy to experience inertia in our relationship with the world and all the people around us. We just let things happen and never consider what we might do about those happenings. Maya Angelou said, “Let us live so we do not regret years of inertia and ignorance, so when we die we can say all of our energy was dedicated to the noble liberation of the human mind and spirit, beginning with my own.” Recalling Einstein’s words again, “Nothing happens until something moves.” May we be reminded that sometimes the something is someone. There are many things worthy of resistance these days. Let us begin by resisting inertia.