It didn’t take me long to learn that the hard sciences just aren’t my thing. I struggled through algebra in 8th grade and, even though I managed to squeak through my high school’s accelerated math and science classes, understanding, memorizing, and applying complex formulas always made my head hurt. I always preferred to apply logic in a different way: constructing arguments; having discussions about social issues of the day; persuasive writing.
Of course, in my teens, I didn’t have this level of self-awareness quite yet. In the mid-‘90s, the smart kids all seemed to be considering one of relatively few career paths: medicine, law, engineering, computer science. For a brief and delusional period late in my high school career, I had thoughts of following the first path – medicine. I think I’d just read The Hot Zone one too many times and thought it sounded like fun to study and work with viruses (through the lens of 2020, I can’t decide whether this would have been awesome or terrifying). At any rate, I started my college career thinking I would be pre-med, but changed my mind after hearing tales of horror about a “weed out” class known as Organic Chem 101. Fortunately, I’d managed a good enough score on a few Advanced Placement tests to have taken care of a semester’s worth of gen-ed requirements before I set foot on my college campus, so I decided to do a little exploration into the social sciences instead. Long story short, I ended up majoring in political science with minor coursework in history and anthropology. So naturally, I went to law school.
The rest is … well, history.
The only math class I took in college was statistics. The only hard science course I took was called “Physics for the Non-Scientist.” It sounded perfect. My (unarticulated) goal was to understand core concepts of physics well enough to be able to make smart jokes at parties. That was about it. The textbook was called “Physics for Poets.” And the professor embraced the class, teaching us poets about waves by describing how microwave ovens work as “making particles do the Macarena.” (This was actually a pretty timely pop culture reference in 1998).
Now, as I sit here in 2020 ruminating on how I’m feeling eight months into a year of upheaval and disruption the likes of which I’ve never seen before, I find myself thinking about concepts of physics to describe my emotions. Warning: From a scientific purist’s perspective, I’m going to botch this…badly. But indulge me.
Three key concepts of physics correlate with Newton’s first three Laws of Motion: 1) Inertia (something in motion tends to stay in motion unless it is stopped by an outside force that stops it or changes its direction; something at rest stays at rest unless it is set in motion by an outside force); 2) Momentum (a product of an object’s mass and velocity); and 3) Propulsion (every action has an equal and opposite reaction).
Now, Newton was talking about the motion of particles. Leave it to a poet to extrapolate these concepts to life:
- Inertia is like time. Time passes by and carries us all along with it.
- Momentum is like making plans. Looking forward and applying the force of planning to use time to move forward instead of just getting carried along by it.
- Propulsion is like setting goals. Leveraging time and planning to create more meaningful forward motion. (I’m not entirely convinced that this is an “equal and opposite reaction,” but let’s just say it’s so in the interest of rolling with it – I’m making a point here, I promise).
Time will carry us on no matter what. Making plans is a force that will carry us forward faster than just riding the current of the tide (wait, did I just mix particle physics with fluid mechanics? Who the fuck knows anymore). Setting goals requires us to harness the power of both to create propulsion – that force that’s strong enough to make a rocket break through the Earth’s atmosphere and gravitational pull to enter space.
Relatively early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, I wrote about feeling like my internal drummer was having a stroke. At the time, there was a dissonance in my head and my life that was just entirely disruptive to the normal rhythm of life for me. I wrote back in May that my drummer was flailing and banging in dysrhythmia. In the months since then, that stroke has subsided, and my internal drummer has pretty much been in a coma. The silence has been deafening and maddening.
So maddening, in fact, that I’m now writing about Newton’s Laws of Motion like I have any earthly idea what I’m talking about.
Here’s where I am now: time has kept its metronomic march forward, and I have been carried along with it. In the blink of an eye, months have passed, and I have nothing to show for them. I feel like I’ve just succumbed to the inertia of it. I’m moving, but only because objects in motion tend to stay in motion. It’s an apathetic kind of motion; not the kind of motion that is purposeful or meaningful, but the kind that is simply inevitable.
What’s worse is that I don’t see an end to that feeling. While no one can ever predict the future, and shit happens that disrupts us from short- and long-term planning under normal circumstances, I can usually tell you, roughly, what the next year will look like in concept form. It’s August. I can usually tell you, by now, what we’re doing for Labor Day Weekend; whether I’m hosting Christmas this year; roughing out a girls’ weekend or a winter getaway with Hubs to someplace warm. You get the idea.
(Now is the time where I take a moment to, as my woke friends say, “check my privilege” and express gratitude for having a stable job, a loving and non-abusive marriage, a safe and stable home – all gross luxuries in stark contrast to the many who struggle to maintain basic physical safety, income, mental health, and stability during this time. And to remind everyone that I’m simply trying to articulate my experience without comparing it to or invalidating anyone else’s.)
I’m used to thinking six months, a year, sometimes two years ahead. Now, I’m thinking no farther ahead than a few days. I know, within a reasonable degree of predictability, what tomorrow will look like. I have a pretty good idea of the tasks I need to get done next Tuesday when I leave the house for a couple of hours to run to the office. But how do I get the momentum back when I don’t feel like I’m in the driver’s seat of my own life? How do I set short- or long-term goals that propel my life forward when I can’t reliably make plans?
These aren’t rhetorical questions; I’m actually asking. Do I embrace this whole one-day-at-a-time thing, or do I continue to rail against it? Are there ways to capture and apply those elusive forces of motion in my life even where the world done gone and lost its mind? Are you doing it? Are you doing more than just circling the airport right now?
Or are you just so desparate that you’re reading an essay about physics written by a poet?
Lawyer At Lunch 