Inertia (prelude)

Perhaps I’ve written about this before, perhaps not. But, even if I have, it’s come up again my in own life, one of those lessons you have to learn and learn and learn until you learn it all. I’m not going to say “until you get it right”, because there really is no such thing. I did get it right. I got it right the first time I learned it, right enough to be able to get past the lesson and onto something else. I got it right the second time I learned it. And the third, and the fourth, and the fifth, throughout my life. It’s like math. You learn counting. Then addition. Then subtraction. Then multiplication. And so on and so on. Some people learn calculus. Some don’t. Some people learn quantum physics. Some don’t. I learned my lesson about inertia, and the later I had a new lesson about inertia to learn. That doesn’t mean I didn’t get it right. I do lapse. I do slide backwards, and on occasion I may need a refresher course, but I’m never in the same place as I was back when I got my first lesson. You never really start over. I know I’ve said that before, so I won’t go into that again.

Inertia, the tendency to stay in motion if you are in motion, or to stay still if you are still. It’s also the biggest reason why people stay on their duffs on the couch instead of doing something new that’s good for them. I could fill up a blog, much less a blog post, about all the things I know would be good for me to do but I just ain’t doing them. I’m there right now. I’ve been there for quite a while, but the recent deaths and now this cold I’ve got have put it into perspective for me. Illness has a tendency to do that for me, because I don’t feel like doing any of my normal distractions – going out with friends, computer games, reading. Because I’m not as distracted, my mind actually has time to bring forth those thoughts that have been sitting patiently in the back of my head, and a lot of them are about what I could do that would make my life a greater pleasure to live. It’s time again to take a few out from the “back room” of my mind, dust them off, and add them to my life. Each time I do, they stick for a while. Some stay for a very long time. It makes my life better when I do, but inertia causes me to stay put. Why? Well, let me think…
(to be continued)