Inertia

Inertia. The first law of motion, stating that an object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an external force.

If a ball stays at rest, it will not move. If a ball is rolling down a hill, it will keep rolling, at the same speed, in the same direction, until some external force, like friction or an obstacle blocking its way, makes it stop.

Human lives are also subject to inertia. When people choose to do nothing, the world doesn’t change. And when we do start something, it keeps rolling on and on, building momentum like a snowball. Here’s a story of inertia, how things can never change, and how things can keep changing.

A girl gets on a coach, heading to the airport. She’s tired and distracted, stuffing her bag in the overhead rack before sitting down with a sigh. A guy boards the coach too, and sits just behind her. He’s on the phone to his dad, telling him he’ll be home in a few hours. The girl overhears the conversation and smiles, as she’s heading to the airport to pick her mum up. She looks for her mobile phone to check the arrival time again, but her phone is nowhere to be seen. 

She panics, and starts rummaging around her handbag and coat pockets again and again, but to no avail. She checks her backpack in the overhead rack, still no phone. As her tears threaten to fall, she checks under her seat to see if her phone was there, and turns around to the guy behind her, asking: “Could you please check under your seat if my phone is there, I can’t seem to find it.” The guy, just finishing his phone conversation, immediately checks and looks around, but no phone was in sight. As he tells this to the girl, he notices her red watery eyes and her distress.

Inertia. If he had left it at there, this story ends just like that. The girl doesn’t find her phone, she cries silently, and nothing changes. The ball stays at rest.

However, an external force starts the ball rolling. He asks her: “Do you want me to call your phone and see if you can hear it ring?” She was so relieved at the offer, and gives her phone number to him. He dials, and at first they hear nothing. He tries again, and she hears a faint sound from the gap between the seats, and finds her phone. She cries in happiness, and thanks him profusely. They smile at each other, and he’s happy to have done a good deed.

Inertia. The ball keeps rolling.

She found her phone, and manages to call her mother at the airport, who had arrived early and didn’t know that her daughter was coming to pick her up as it was a surprise. If she hadn’t found her phone, that girl and her mum would likely have missed each other at the airport, and another sad event would have occurred. That one good deed has spread the happiness and spared two people from unhappiness.

Inertia. The ball keeps rolling.

The girl tells the story of the guy on the coach to her mum, and her mum insists on sending a message to the guy to thank him. She sends a thank you message, and he replies. That conversation somehow lengthened, and they became friends. He told her that he’d gone home and taken some time off because he couldn’t cope with life in university, and it turns out they went to the same university but different courses. She becomes a really good friend, and thanks to her support, he goes back to university, and they graduate in the same year.

That guy is now my husband. On the day of our wedding, he gave me a framed print of my thank you message, the one I sent him all those years ago. “This was the message that started it all, this is where our story started. This time, it’s my turn to thank you, for choosing me, and we’ll continue our story together from now on”.

Inertia. Our story is still going on, like the ball that keeps rolling, until the external force called death comes and parts us. In every moment of life, we hold the power to change the lives of people around us, we all own a force that can decide whether the world changes or stays the same. Love, kindness, and empathy can move people in the right directions; every good deed keeps going on and on, spreading like ripples. Don’t let the forces of anger, selfishness and envy stop the ripples. As long as we keep those ripples going strong, we can make the world a happier place, if only just by a little bit.