Person A and Person B

| by Talia Nguyen

Gravity is commonly known to most as what makes apples fall on Newton’s head at a rate of 9. 8 m/s². It’s what makes leaves flutter down in the autumn breeze after an afternoon picnic in the fields of golden browns, when tea stains your plaid red dress and seeps through to your criss-crossed legs as the liquid accelerates down; it’s what makes nature cry tears that splatter over the heads below, only for us to block out this emotion, let the tears run down our umbrella coverings, and ignore the pain of our ancestors.

But it is also a force that holds us together, equal to G ⁕ Mm/r². The force that holds a mother to a child in the stark-walled hospital, the infant with a faint but strong pulse in rhythm with its protector. It’s the force that undermines the toxicity of relationships, where lovers who are not meant to be with each other stay lovers, where the power is unequal and one puts in more work per time than the other. It’s the force that keeps friends across oceans connected. It can all be summed up in a number, so simple and plain.

This everlasting downward force only depends on how much mass an object has, the quantity of matter in an object. The bigger the mass of a heart, the bigger a person’s gravitational pull on another person. In physics, this heart is tangible and can be measured in kilograms. But can you really quantify the gravitational force others exert on you?

The unavoidable force of gravity is unlike that of the electrostatic force, which can be so meticulously, maybe nefariously, calculated through Felectric=ke(q₁q₂/r²), where there must be a charge to have force. Theoretically, if there is no charge on either object, then there is no electrostatic force. But we’re all charged, whether we like it or not, where the like charges repel and the opposites attract. That must explain why we’re so much like our mothers and fathers but repel the notion of being related to them when talking to our friends. We don’t ever want to be like our mothers or fathers, and try to find a different charge for ourselves. We want to stray from what we know—the like charges of pharmacists, lawyers, nurse practitioners—try new things, and venture out into the art of literature and storytelling, though somehow we never make it that far. We can’t make these decisions for ourselves. We’re neutral and numb.

But a strong enough attraction to a neutral charge can cause the charge to be attracted to the other, thus creating a vector. Vectors have both a magnitude and a direction, with the magnitude of each vector traveling a straight line, unwavering, unbending in its walk. If the vector and the trajectory of that charge, that person’s life, is so great, then that person has the ability to suck in other neutrals. It’s why we follow leaders who never lead, it’s why it takes catastrophe to start a revolution. It’s why so many people are so flabbergasted when disaster slaps us in the face. And they wonder why.

So if Person A is walking at a rate of three meters per second towards the lunch line from her physics class and Person B is walking at a rate of five meters per second but four meters behind Person A, how long will it take for Person B to catch up to Person A? And will their trajectories ever meet? Will Person’s A gravity pull in Person B? Or will their like charges prevent them from attraction?

Such a simple physics problem. It seems like such simple math. But it would take a lifetime of opportunity to solve this equation, too many revolutions around our burning star, to even begin to sum it up. You simply can’t.