metonymy4u

Lately it seems to me that the entire world has just totally lost it. My life has been filled with violence it seems in all spheres – walking down the street, at work, past events coming back to bite me in the ass, etc, etc, etc. This morning on the subway, I was thinking about human behavior in terms of energy. If a system is excessively loaded up with energy, an over filled balloon for example, it is in a very unstable state. What that means is that the cohesive forces of the balloon’s elastic walls are just barely able to contain the high pressure air. One small pin prick and the balloon releases all its unstable energy – that is, it explodes. Humans seem very similar. When someone is very emotionally vulnerable, the system is in an unstable, high energy configuration. One small pin prick (a word, a frown, a noise, a mistaken gesture) is enough to release all the energy in one massive explosion. We’ve either got to find a way to deflate our balloons or stop poking each other with seemingly innocent pin sticks.