A person in motion

An object at rest tends to stay at rest. An object in motion tends to stay in motion. Newton's First Law of Motion.

Inertia.




The idea is that if you throw a tennis ball in space and it doesn't hit anything it will keep drifting forever and ever. I know that space isn't a vaccuum, so that's not entirely true, but still... there it is: black space with suns, planets, and tennis balls floating in every direction.

When I was in college I went through this really rough period when I felt like I had somehow lost control of my life. Every day I would get up and do the exact same things I had done the day before, like I was some kind of robot. Only it was tougher the second day than it had been the day before because all those days were building up on me. It was like a downward spiral in reverse. I wrote a short story about it called "Upward Spiral."

Eventually, you begin to feel like you need to do something drastic to break the cycle -- like you've created such a groove in your life that no small change will suffice. You need to run away. Or kill yourself. Or join a monestary.

What's funny is that no one did this to me. I did it through my habits and motions which, somehow, became set in concrete...like water creating grooves in hills. I was no longer running on my own power. I was running on inertia.

I once read a book called The Underdogs about a group of Mexican revolutionaries who, after a time, become the very evil they once fought against. They become thieves and rapists and killers. Near the end of the book, a journalist asks the leader of this band why he keeps fighting. He picks up a stone and throws it down a hill, and the rock keeps going -- which is the only answer he gives her.

We need freshness to survive. We need fresh air, fresh vistas. Otherwise, we stagnate.