Rereading Newton after My Second Year of Teaching

The scientific nature of the ordinary man
Is to go on out and do the best you can.
    -John Prine, "Humidity Built the Snowman" (1995)

Tomorrow is the last day of summer school; I am on the precipice of rest. Consider the word "precipice," and its aesthetic perfection in accordance with its meaning: "a very steep rock face or cliff, especially a tall one" (New Oxford American Dictionary). It's a word with a lot of vertical lines—no slopes. Spoken aloud, it's not sharp, exactly, but not melodic either. Its sound, though ending with sibilance, seems to just drop away.

I have been inching closer to rest for months now. In reality, the last bout of real, prolonged rest in my life was in December 2021. Since then I have alternated between trudging and lilting, and a few undecided steps in between, to get to this edge I now face.

We know that if we don't take time to rest, our bodies and minds will rest anyway. I have felt, known, anticipated my dire need for rest since long before this point. My body has forced me to rest a few times when I've been bed-ridden with sinusitis, which has always left me feeling more behind on everything, neither rejuvenated nor relaxed.

I avoid rest, in practice, though I conceptually understand its demands on all of us. We can only outrun rest like we can our shadows—sprinting, airborne, separate only in perpetual motion, rejoined by the inescapable tug of gravity. And how we fall, how we land when we hit the ground, is up to chance when we're in such haphazard flight.

So, tomorrow I administer summer school final exams, and Friday is "off." I have promised myself it's a day off from everything, not just teacher-tasks. It's a promise I've broken every day of the New Year. This new year has reached middle-age. I have begun to realize that like the hypothetical object in Newton's law of inertia, I rely on extrinsic forces to change my motion. I move, or I rest, unless I meet an external force.

Like every human, I gained momentum from the force of my own birth, literally and metaphorically. I was like you: a wiggly baby, a curious toddler, an imaginative child, an involved pre-teen, an active young adult, and now, a busy young professional. Like most Americans I adopted workaholic tendencies before I had read Marx or understood that my physical and mental skills have been commodified. Still, the past two and a half years have forced my motion to accelerate and now, it takes more to stop it. And I need that momentum. I thrive in it. Once I start something, I am almost powerless to stop it until it is done, and done to my satisfaction. This, of course, is a pleasure and a burden. Usually, mostly, I love the feeling of barreling forward with seemingly limitless energy into something that satisfies me over and over again in so many simultaneous ways, like teaching.

I can feel my reluctance to take a break, rest, take time off, every time I consider it. "But I could use that free time to catch up, then get ahead, then..." My reluctance is less "unwillingness or disinclination" and more akin to a deep fear or a subconscious terror. If I stop myself, what force will come along to set me back in motion? How will I put an end to my rest once it's begun? What if nothing comes along, no force opposes my stillness, nothing ends my halt and gets me moving again?

The force that starts the ball rolling is not a "force," connotatively, but a nudge. The one that stops it is forcible, a sturdy wall, rather than the gentle tap of a finger. This, too, is frightening. When I stop, and the shock wears off, what bruises or blockades await? What well-suppressed mentalities may surface in the absence of so many other things to fill my mind?

In this now-normalized national workaholic environment, I feel particularly well-suited to extended periods of relentless work. I, the "object," once set in motion, tend to stay in motion unless acted upon by an opposing force, and for me, that opposition must be strong. I have not rested all year in part because I've been "busy," "overworked," taking on a lot of responsibility and in turn being asked for a lot from the people around me. But really, I haven't rested because I haven't wanted to. I've needed to, but the need has not sparked a desire. The force of my inherent need has not been strong enough, or enough outside myself, to stop me.

In Newton's law, there's the vacuum-sealed theory and the theory in practice. In a frictionless system populated by perfectly spherical objects this law is perfectly illustrated: you can set one of those spheres moving with even a touch and watch it continue, forever. In our system we have friction between objects and the very air particles surrounding them. That sphere, should you tap it, will roll until the net forces of gravity, and air resistance, and surface friction stop its roll.

My fear is rational, when considered within a frictionless, spherical system: I, once at rest, shall never come across an opposing force to nudge me back to "reality" again. I shall be a lone sphere floating in a non-space devoid of gravity, resistance, air, or company. No other force, be it a gentle nudge or the irresistable gravitational force, shall interrupt my rest, and I'll be stuck that way—stationary—forever.

The reality is, luckily, more cluttered. Someone or something will come along and force me back into action when the time is right. Likely, a little before the time feels right. And even more likely? My own boredom, readiness, creative drive will be the gently opposing force which enacts my resumed motion. But the fear feels real. The threat of "falling behind," and ending up even more overworked in the future, looms.

I hope to slow, then stop, acted upon by the natural forces of my environment: the passage of time, the turning of the seasons, the gentle tug of my exhaustion—my somatic, mental, emotional, and spiritual exhaustion. An object in motion tends to stay in motion, unless acted upon by an opposing force. In the frictionless, spherical universe, perhaps that force is a head-on collision with another solid object. But here, maybe it's the gradual and long-awaited pit-stop after summer school final exams and too many sinus infections this calendar year already. Maybe it's just time, and maybe facing my fear is just the force I need to finally stop working for a moment.

To anyone craving rest, seeking it, or currently in it: Raise your glass and let it collide with mine! In the system of celebration, beers and glasses, cheers and toasts, we are the Movers, who provide just enough Force to hear that "clink" but not enough to shatter. May we have the same foresight in Moving and Resting, this second half of 2022.

Photo: Dec. 18, 2020 | halfway through my first year teaching: caught inadvertently napping in the faculty office during my finals off-period; immediately sent home by the nurses because I "didn't look well"