Today I was reading an essay about an experience a person had at a museum. She joined a random tour expecting to be told about paintings and sculpture and instead had an 84-year-old tour guide showing historic garments and talking about what went into making them. She talked about threads being spun from fibers then woven into fabric, glass beads being made just for one garment, and about threads being salvaged and dyed to embroider a dress for a dance. In my lifetime, garments have gone from being an investment to being disposable, so it may be hard for younger people nowadays to understand why anyone would want to invest time into sewing a shirt, knitting a pair of socks, or even repairing a pair of jeans.
I am convinced there is something in some of us that compels us to make things. When I say “make,” I mean to make a garment, to make a meal, to grow vegetables or flowers, to build something, to paint something, or to sculpt something. Person ally, if I lost my ability to make things, I am not sure I could remain sane. That thought makes me look around and wonder if more people have the urge to make or create and suppress it, leading them to do things that are self-destructive or maybe even a little bit crazy.
Pretty much every time I am making something in public—lately it has been knitting— someone tells me, “I can’t do anything like that; I wish I could.” I wonder what makes them think they cannot; have they tried?
I was thinking about why people, including me, think and wish but never start or try. I looked up the word “inertia” to see if it meant what I thought it did, and it is even worse than I thought. The Oxford Dictionary says it means 1. The tendency to do nothing or remain unchanged, and 2. A property of matter by which it continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, unless that state is changed by an external force.
Now that second definition is the physics definition, not the human behavior one, but it sure fits a lot of human situations, does it not? We can almost always choose to change our state or direction, but it is rare that we humans do that voluntarily. Most of us need that external force to really make a change. But what external force is going to make us turn off the television or put down our phones do something differently than we have been doing?
Inertia gets hold of me regularly and interferes with that part of me that wants to be making and moving forward. In fact, in feels like a constant tug of war. When I think about it, maybe that is exactly why I do so much making, because I want to fight against inertia keeping me pinned to my comfortable chair.
There are so many more things today to keep us in our existing state of rest or uniform, straight line motion and fewer daily reasons to change what we are doing. What would you be doing if you could beat inertia?