ON INERTIA

As loyal readers of mine undoubtedly know, I am huge fan of laws of motion. Wait, what? Anyway, Newton's First Law of Motion, often simply referred to as the Law of inertia, says that an object in motion (or at rest) will continue in that motion (or that lack of motion) until acted on by an outside force. For example, if you threw a 64 mile-an-hour fastball into the vacuum of space, it would continue in its initial direction and velocity until it was affected by the gravity of some planetary body or hit by a comet or something. Make sense? Great.

Sociologically speaking, Newton was on to something, even if he was busy getting hit on the head with apples and campaigning to have units of force named after him. For example, one often hears about couples staying together simply because they have grown comfortable with one another.

I haven't dealt with that, myself. I think I have stayed in FRIENDSHIPS that weren't the best for me because they were really the only friends I had, and I wouldn't have had anything else to do with my time. That's a kind of friend inertia.

On a much less serious note, I recently submitted the word "televisionertia" to urbandictionary.com (my 2nd entry!). I thought of it because for some reason, I keep watching the show "Heroes." I don't particularly enjoy the show. I never liked it as much as others did. But I know that Tuesday morning, some of my co-workers are going to be discussing it, and I'll feel obligated to halfheartedly participate in the discussion. I haven't had anything to make me stop watching the show, so I continue. Boom. Law of Inertia.

Finally, the impetus for this post - a chubby balding friend recently learned that the corporate office has made the decision to close his retail location. He'll get a severance package and all that, and I have no doubt that he'll be able to find another job. But at the same time, couldn't this be what jumpstarts another aspect of his life? I feel that this kick in the [humorous body part] is just the "outside force" acting on him to change his work inertia. Since he WAS at rest, now that this outside force has acted on him, he'll pick up a direction and a velocity.