What I Got Wrong About Inertia
From invisible foe to ally, how my relationship with inertia changed when I realized I was the one holding the reins.
It is nothing if not ironic that each time the topic of inertia has come up on my blog schedule, I freeze. I don’t just summarily dismiss it for the time being, I punt it to the desolate, cold Siberia of my content calendar. Then I gratefully plunge down happier rabbit holes of discovery, purpose and nostalgia.
But this time, the third time that life puts inertia in front of me, I am ready and willing if not especially eager to tackle it.
I am confident writing about inertia will now have a cathartic effect. It is particularly relevant and timely given the events of the last few weeks. And zooming out even further, it will no doubt prove to be a productive and revealing filter through which to reflect on a year shaped by incredible recalibration and change.
When this blog drops, it will almost be a year to the day that I first sketched out a faint and fortuitous roadmap for my future. Over a pot of peppermint tea at the Hotel Maria Cristina in San Sebastián, Spain, I allowed myself to seriously entertain for the very first time the dreams stirring inside of me. What had taken a lifetime to acknowledge, took less than 30 minutes to outline. When I walked away that day, I held a wispy framework for an idea that would become The Untethered Traveler.
Two weeks later, I was taking the baby steps required to trade in a corporate career track for my life’s true calling.
As I’ve said before, I felt an instant, deep connection to San Sebastián. My trip last March was only my second, but I felt like I’d already lived a lifetime there. I can’t help but marvel that of all places, it was San Sebastián that showed me how Taste as compass could free me from the tethers of a life I’d absentmindedly caught myself up in.
My reluctance in the past to explore inertia was an act of self-preservation. I didn’t want to reopen healed over wounds or unlock the sealed floodgates of self-judgment and self-condemnation. I was worried if I opened that Pandora’s Box I would get sucked right back into the quicksand I had fought so hard to drag myself out of.
The real irony is each time I shied away from the opportunity to reflect on inertia at work in my life, I inadvertently robbed myself of the chance to see how much I had grown this past year. I deprived myself of the perspective of celebrating where my own agency and gumption had actually carried me.
I recognize now that I had always been the one applying the outside force redirecting inertia. When I slow down and frame it that way, reflecting on inertia feels like an empowering and invigorating get-to, not a have-to.
The first thing I’m struck by as I go back to ground zero is how easy it could be to make inertia my scapegoat. But inertia’s not the bad guy. Stagnation is. And stagnation itself can be really hard to admit, but easy to detect as it manifests as denial, hopelessness, frustration, despair and even overindulgence.
When we first realize we have the power within to break stagnation’s spell, we will inevitably look back and take stock of all the times inertia held us in place. It will be a tedious exercise full of blame, shame and regret. But if living in alignment with our authentic selves is our primary goal, we must eventually come to accept inertia never held us against our own will. The reins were always in our hands. We chose the stillness, whether it seemed that way at the time or not.
When we finally set the right life in motion and move with intent from a source of truth that is undeniably our own, we will find generous clarity and acceptance. Our relationship with the stillness and the motion will understandably change. How we come to embrace the relationship between the two states is the difference between merely moving toward purpose and living with it.
What started off as a misunderstood, crippling relationship with an invisible foe, has transformed into an invaluable partnership with a lifelong ally. The more awareness we have for how our choices shape and dictate our current state of inertia, the more embracing it can feel – like swimming with instead of against the current.
I think about all those moments when the universe seems to clear a path for us, seeding it with all the right signs and signals, elusive answers and happy coincidences. I play back from my own lived experience the inexplicable synchronicity I have found in places I have traveled, books I have read, sweet and poignant collisions I have encountered. I obsess yet again with the mystery that the more we seem to move in the direction we are meant to go, the less energy we have to expend to get there.
We have long called all of this some version of momentum, good fortune, good planning and luck. But we can also call it inertia.
Remarkably, when we move where we are called and make measured decisions from inside the flow we find there, we get to take refuge under the protective wing of inertia’s unbiased predilection to keep us in motion. Flying under such cover inspires a sense of invincibility and a contagious courage and confidence. Being crystal clear with our intention then is more important than ever, especially when we want to travel for self-discovery and connection.
The first few days after I was forced to cancel New Zealand, I remember feeling pangs of doubt and uneasiness. My biggest fear was I had grounded myself for too long between trips, that my rhythm was unrecoverable. In waiting so long to travel again, I worried I had accidentally numbed the drive and curiosity that had always compelled me in the past to get out and explore. I even accused myself of growing too complacent and comfortable in my routines. But nothing shook me more than the thought of feeling like I may have given up and given in to catastrophizing.
What if a new spell of stagnation had been cast?
I was panicking, and inside that panic I was terrified I was going to let each and every fear that surfaced infect me – the fear of what could go wrong, the fear of leaving the cocoon of home, of failing, of being a fraud, of settling, of apathy.
And then I remembered.
An object at rest stays at rest unless acted upon by an outside force.
Similarly, an object in motion stays in motion until acted upon by an outside force.
I held the reins.
And then I remembered what almost happened to San Sebastián.
Last year, three days into my three-week trip to Spain, I panicked too. I slashed my trip in half, cut out Seville, a trip to Spanish wine country and… San Sebastián. At the time, I remember feeling suffocated. I felt guilty and unworthy without a job to be spending this kind of time, money and energy on travel. I felt out of sync with everything around me. I was lost and I was stressed. Uncharacteristically, all I wanted to do was come home.
I was committed though to making the most of the time I had left. With magnificent Madrid as my home base, I took day trips to Segovia and Toledo. I had long, slow spectacular lunches, with lunch in Toledo at Taberna el Botero ranking among my favorites of the trip. Then I moved down south to Granada. It took but one more lunch at La Telefonica in Granada’s old town for Taste to set me right again.
Without ever even realizing it, something amazing and not so insignificant had shifted inside of me the more I moved.
Before I knew it, my shoulders had dropped, my heart felt lighter. I felt lighter. My appetite to see and taste it all came roaring back. Just three days after I’d cut the trip short, I re-extended it, staying even longer than the original itinerary.
And while I still regret sacrificing wine country to make it all work, I will never regret keeping and extending that fateful stay in San Sebastián.
There over a piping hot pot of peppermint tea, riding the tailwinds of inertia, I set the rest of my life in motion.
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