Share

Ever notice how you tend to continue doing things once you start them? Cleaning the kitchen becomes the living room, the dinning room, the house. Or how you tend to stay energetic when you exercise a bit? I have! It seems that no matter what it is I end up doing, be it something productive or something lazy, I tend to continue down that path for a day, a night or a week. I have called this Newtonian Living, because...well I wanted to.

We have all heard of Sir Issac Newton and his famous Laws of Motion, which govern the universe and keeps the planets in their orbits, spinning and free. Of course they have very real applications on Earth too, governing how object behave according to their mass and the forces acting upon it. Yet I wonder if any of us have thought about these laws when they are applied to our daily lives, or our habits. Lets look at Newtons Laws and see how my life is reflected in them, perhaps you will notice the same things in your own life too.

1.Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.

This is what I was referring to at the beginning of this post. Once something is put in motion it tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. This month I have tried to start up some form of an exercise program. I have noticed that my efforts to stay active and fit will go all throughout a day, that is if I can get them started. I will do jumping jacks at lunch, or take the stairs more often than a normal person should. If watching TV I will do crunches or calisthenics on commercials, or during the program itself. It's great fun. However, if I allow myself to sit around all day, or if I just curl up on the couch, my body will tend to stay in a lethargic state. Once my body is in motion it therefore will tend to stay in motion, if I allow it to stop I tend to have a lazy day. The same can be said of a project, once I get going on a project, or if I take an idea fresh off the anvil, I find I can run with it for a good while. The longer I put something off without preliminary work (characters, settings, etc.) the harder it becomes to pick up the narrative of what I originally envisioned.

2.The acceleration a of a body is parallel and directly proportional to the net force F and inversely proportional to the mass m, i.e., F=ma.

This may take some explaining. In its most basic sense this law states that an objects mass multiplied by it's acceleration is equal to the force being exerted upon it. If there is a force acting upon a mass it will accelerate! Simple right? Right! So how does it apply to life? Striped of all its fancy words this boils down to momentum. I see it when I begin working on a project, I gather up steam and find myself unwilling to stop. The words and ideas are just pouring out, and I get caught up in a fervor for the project. When I am knee deep in a book project that is pounding on all cylinders like that, it is the only thing I want to talk about. I'll bouncing ideas off of people and seeing their reactions. I'll take notes in my journal and then see if they fit into the story. When a project gets momentum behind it, there's no stopping it. Yet at the same time a project can get torn down by that same rampant energy. I have a bad habit of proofreading as I write, which means I will stop my flow and go fix something. That fix leads me to other errors and more corrections, and suddenly the entire thing has stopped. The momentum has shifted or gone completely. Momentum can be both a blessing and a curse, something that will either push you, and sustain you throughout the creative process, or derail the entire thing into a jumbled mess.

3. The mutual forces of action and reaction between two bodies are equal, opposite and collinear.

While I am hard at work on a project, there is always the temptation to just stop. Why not play some games? Why not enjoy a movie? Of course the reasoning's why not are found in the first section, if I stop, then I stop. Yet the opposite temptations are present when I am in the middle of being lazy. I am constantly thinking about things I should be doing, either chores, or exercise, or something creative while I am just loafing about. We live our lives pulled by the desire to achieve and the desire to have fun or be comfortable. Neither one will necessarily be stronger than the other until you decide which way to go.

So there you have it, my thoughts on a Newtonian Life. A flimsy idea, but one I like to muse on from time to time. You see, it is good to know certain things, such as the fact that if I sit down on my couch and stop, it's about a million times harder to get back up and be productive again. It's good to know that a project can take on enough momentum to get through the hours and hours of work it takes to come to completion. It's nice to know that the temptation to stop is always there, and that there are consequences (good and bad) of those decisions. Sometimes I wonder if old Sir Issac had ever thought about his laws in this way, but then again I doubt his couch was simply as wonderful as mine.

Sayonara