Relativity

Relativity

  Albert Einstein once said, “When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.” In essence all things are relative to your perceptions and perspective. Your perception of time passing is relative to what you’re doing at the moment. If you’re hungry and standing by the microwave waiting for three minutes to tick off of the timer, it seems like it takes forever. But if you’re watching your favorite TV show, that hour goes by way too quickly. Same thing if you’re at work; an eight or twelve hour shift can seem like an eternity. But on the weekend, that same eight or twelve hours is gone before you know it. It’s the same with your perception of size. It is all relative to your view point. Once when my son was only about three or four years old he had been in the bathroom taking a bath. One of my wife’s best friends dropped by for a visit, and I was standing in the kitchen talking to her waiting for my wife to return from grocery shopping. My son came running out of the bathroom, not knowing we had company, and yelled, “Dad, I’m finished with my bath.” My wife’s friend said laughing, “Oooh, I see a little TT.” My son froze in his naked as a jaybird tracks, looking at her for a moment, and then blurted out, “But my Daddy has a big one!” And then he ran back in the bathroom. I was turning fifty shades of red while my wife’s friend was laughing so hard she nearly passed out. My wife came back from her grocery shopping about that time and asked what was so funny. When her friend was finally able to stop laughing long enough to tell her, she asked my wife if what my son said was true. My darling sweet wife didn’t stick up for me at all. Instead she just started laughing uncontrollably too. Now I was displaying a remarkable new shade of red and decided it was time to make my retreat into the bathroom to help my son dry off. That’s a good, if altogether embarrassing, example of size being all too relative to your point of view. To further illustrate, when I look at a bunch of ants scurrying about their ant business, I feel like an impossibly large giant – so big that the ants aren’t even capable of perceiving me. But when I think of the universe, I feel way smaller than any ant, and I have a tough time getting my head around such immensity. So examples of relativity really are everywhere you look.

  There have been times in my life, when I bemoaned my situation. When I was feeling like the whole world was against me, and my situation couldn’t get much worse. One such time was on a Christmas eve when I was going through a rough patch in my marriage and, at the same time, was extremely worried about my son-in-law who was in the Army and had just been sent to Somalia. It was late in the evening, and I went out to throw the trash in the dumpster. When I tossed the bag over the side, I heard an unexpected noise. I climbed up on the side of the dumpster and was shocked to see a scraggly looking old man inside the dumpster looking for scraps of food. When I went back in the house and told my wife about it, she told me to go outside and invite him in to get something to eat. When I went back out there, he was already gone. I went back inside and sat and cried - ashamed of myself for thinking that my life was so bad. I realized it could be a lot worse. That old man in the dumpster scrounging for food on a Christmas Eve could have been me. I said a prayer for the old man in the dumpster and my son-in- law in Somalia, and then quit feeling sorry for myself and did something about my life in general. My attitude changed a great deal from that day forward. So bottom line, relativity is not only a good way to describe motion through space-time, but also a good way to relate to almost any situation you might find yourself in.  You might be riding the crest of a wave and seem to have everything going for you. But at the same time there are some doing much better feeling sorry for you and many doing much worse. Some of those doing much worse may even be happier than you are. It’s all relative to your own perspective and perceptions. So if you can fully grasp the concept of relativity and remind yourself to apply it to everyday situations in your life, you might find that you have more control over your life and happiness than you ever previously imagined. You may not be able to change your circumstances at will, but you can always change the way you perceive them. It’s all relative after all.