It’s not that they don’t. Every action leads to a reaction, whether we hear it, feel it, or see it.
Sir Isaac Newton’s Third Law.
But, what makes a wall fall down when pushed?
What makes one swim even across an ocean or sea instead of just float with its current?
What makes us get up each day instead of remain down?
The choice to do nothing rather than something commits to a decision just the same analogous thought of understanding “yes” or “no” to either denote a definitive answer.
Either something happens or doesn’t before our eyes. And, yet, nothing can also happen.
Falling, failing, forward are all forces to each create some finality on its own just as much as fight, flight, or freeze. Yes?
Action is not just involved in the physical sense (what to me is physics), but also in heart, mind, and spirit.
However your body reacts involves feelings, thinking, and believing. Perhaps why we have yet to achieve highest tiers of super intelligence- it is not just in doing or even mastering all five senses located above our chin but that gut below.
My notion of F = f + ma suggests that the end force (F) culminates from force (f) already existing.
For us, that force is within us.
This is why we can take down walls, lift cars, and climb mountains against treacherous weathers while fighting change in altitude.
There is this something in us that idles- always.
When Master Yoda speaks about using the force, it is because he knows we possess such, not because we have to first find it.
Until we are no longer, there stands forces of energy within each of us.
Dark or light; positive or negative.
Indiscriminate to what type of force, nonetheless, the presence is constant , independent from any part of mass or acceleration trying to move with it.
Essentially, a force negative (-1) or a force positive (1) will result as so without the existence of mass cluster or movement.
While mass cannot be denoted negative to exist, acceleration (reverse acceleration) can. My analogical example of this is one hitting rock bottom.
Once mass is at zero, no matter how fast an object projects in reverse speed (e.g. someone plummeting to their fatal demise physically or chemically), once mass hits zero (i.e., the end game), both mass and acceleration become a product of zero together, leaving idling force independently at -1 or 1.
A negative or positive force (F) is the energy left withstanding in the air nonetheless.
Walk into a room of negative force, you feel it.
Walk into a room of positive force, you feel the difference.
(Mix both energies in a room, positive, grounded, with the negatives hanging below clouds, you get lightning. We call this, opposites attract. I’ll reserve my analogical thoughts on this notion. lol)
In a moment of fear (either false evidence appearing real or facing evidence appearing real), the force in us becomes David fearlessly ready to take down any Goliath versus the rest who encourage doubt or sit in it.
In the moment of called-upon action, the heart, mind, body, and spirit are called to a reaction.
There is the fight in us.
There is the flight in us.
There is the fright in us.
And, yet. What if the unwanted persists?
What of the moment where we see that the fight, the flight, or the freeze may have helped one to survive but the world simply had more of similar to offer?
Is the fight in one the same as the fight in another in similar battles?
When one fights, is one sure to always win?
And, if one does, this time, is there a guarantee that another fight that awaits will have the same outcome?
If one loses in the fight, do all surrender the first time?
What in the flight of a matter?
Are there the same feelings upon reflection of what just occurred?
To walk away, to leave, to run off to perhaps, what may be seen at a time as the better choice, are there always a perfect feeling of choice made?
In one who takes flight, is this guarantee that the landing elsewhere is always better?
Matter of fact, could we suppose many are still in “flight” having not found a better or safer place to take safe refuge?
Do the flight reaction in one actually signify alienation at times of what could have been fought with a chance to win instead?
While certainly we urgently should suggest for one or anyone to get out of harm’s way, do we also suggest, here, that to escape unwanted circumstances is okay? Over and over again, if necessary?
How do we deem necessary?
Is flight from dangers seen as flight from obligations the same?
To freeze. Is this leading to that catatonic state where one sees what is happening but does nothing to change the outcome?
Does one freeze for the moment to survive? Or, does one freeze always to emotionally, mentally, or spiritually die some more?
At one point should one, so to speak, thaw out to slip out of an unwanted circumstance?
When one finally can, do all do?
Are not several still frozen in time, chance, or opportunity to change the next moment?
Or, is freezing simply another choice to accept what was accepted before?
I think as a child who wants nothing more than peace, laughter, and endless joy.
To be in a safehaven where all can be understood as a growth in progress, each a seed just trying to find its way to full maturation of whatever it was meant to become.
In this place, all dance and sing. All harmoniously celebrate.
But, then, the world has a different agenda. All children, to my years of noticing, weren’t made to think, do, and act the same.
Even in a room of children you see the tests of choices. As much as the heart, mind, body, and spirit all work to get through a moment, a time, or day, there are just the eyes that are very telling.
Forward movement is essentially what overcomes even the falls and fails.
Those who don’t take flight, who show no fight, or are essentially exhibiting more of being thawed out instead of frozen, each simply move forward.
What I have come to realize is that we don’t speak of what happens next when fight, flight, or freeze do not work in a state of fear.
There is this embodiment that takes over. There is this whisper- this consoling thing within the soul that must choose to keep going.
And, so, the heart, the mind, the body, and the spirit, as if knowing that what is geared still exists must all choose to still move forward.
Whether in a moment of reaction one decides to do any of the three, the heart, the mind, the body, and the spirit, as if holding hands, still move on. Forward to another day.
How does one become insensitive to the dramatic lives of those around?
How does one seem indifferent between polar opposites of circumstances?
How does one act seemingly impenetrable to hurt and pain?
I used to tell my older children that you know they are real tears because they can’t be controlled.
The part you don’t mention is when the strength of you comes in as if walking into your room of sadness to firmly tell you to get up and get going.
The world could give you endless bandaids but whether the scars stay or go away, you become in charge of the hurt and pain.
Your fight, your flight, your freeze- none worked. Forward you go until another training moment arrives another day.
Forward. The F in F = f + ma. Whether you do it in heart, mind, body, or spirit, Master Yoda would be proud.
However, negative or positive force, sometimes one may not even know or realize.
The Anakin turned to Darth Vader we must each be careful to not become.
There are just some things you cannot explain to your children in exact meaning of your words. However, you do everything in your power to make sure they never have to find out.
As a teacher of many levels of economic challenges, I am thankful to have received what I always call as my “training days” to understand the underlying scope of one’s eyes, movements, remarks, gestures, and sometimes, mockeries.
I recall watching the very first movie, Avatar (2009), and like a heavy weight inside of me lifted, upon hearing the scene where the words I see you are spoken, I felt a sense of release.
Sometimes, it doesn’t matter that the child in you still safely hides.
To hear a voice of comfort that they know you are in there is all that is necessary to keep going.
The child that moves forward inside never dies.
The beauty of this is that it knows when it can step out to laugh, sing, and dance its heart out.
Those moments of flight, fright, or freeze have become well aware of itself.
The soldiers take care of those.
The child inside is safe.
Like the Golden Child taught great wisdom, the unstoppable tears is knowing ugliness exists. And, still, it knows how to protect itself from such realities to do its part.
Laugh, sing, and dance its heart out to heal the wounds of the world.
