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Golden Inspirations |
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" The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."
- Eleanor Roosevelt
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Home  Featured Columnists Leigh Anne Jasheway-Bryant The Accidental Comic The Theory of Aging Relatively
The Theory of Aging Relativity
Even if you weren’t good at physics in high school, chances are you understand the theory of aging relativity. This is the theory that states: “Relatively speaking, I won’t be middle-aged until I’m dead.” Which explains why at sixteen you thought thirty was ancient, but today thirty is too young to make important decisions like voting and choosing a wardrobe.
Einstein explained this phenomenon using the space/time continuum. He proved that it doesn’t matter where you are in time, but how much space there is between your age and what you perceive as “old.” And, the further you move along the time line, the more space there must be. Thus, for many of us these days, “old” is not a term we use to refer to wine or moldy stuff in the back of the refrigerator, but rather Neanderthal Man or the Great Pyramids.
Einstein also said that time slows as you approach a black hole. This is an important principle because many people feel that as they get older (or, relatively speaking, “closer to middle-aged”), time starts to fly by too quickly. Thus, the solution is obvious: hang out near a black hole. The waiting room of your HMO, for example. You can see that Einstein was right, as time almost stands still while you’re thumbing through a 1987 issue of Highlights for Children trying to not to be sneezed on by the patients on either side of you.
Your parents’ house is another black hole. A quick visit to the folks not only slows things down, it can actually cause time to go in reverse. Science can easily explain many of the things that happen as we get older. For example, there’s the theory that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is why, when your kids discover that you still have an active sex life, they react so violently. Just like you do when you hear the same about them. No one is to blame, it’s just the scientific method.
Then there’s the law of entropy, which states that: “Bodies in motion tend to stay in motion. Bodies at rest tend to stay at rest.” Little known is the third part of this law which had been lost for years, but resurfaced recently as someone finally cleaned up the lab. The third part of the law states: “Bodies in movies and on TV tend to be figments of someone’s imagination, so there’s no reason to get worked up.”
Last, but not least, there’s the theory of matter and anti-matter. This theory holds that the more matter you accumulate as you age, the less it matters. Which is why a 1” gain around your hips in your twenties is a crisis, while a 6” gain in your fifties doesn’t even make you break a sweat. After all, there are so many things that matter more than how you look in shorts. Well, there you go. Everything you ever wanted to know about the physics of aging. Next month, maybe we’ll explore logarithms!
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