The great minds have laid down many theories and laws that
govern the human nature, the metaphysics, and the everyday life. But, the real
question needed to be asked is, is every human being affected by a certain
outcome of an event in the same manner? It all comes down to relativity. Every action
will have an equal and opposite reaction depending on what we relate it to. Every
emotion we feel is felt because of the relation with the person, thing or
thought we are discussing. Relativity is the one sole reason for every
characteristic in every single person.
Happiness is felt only when we can relate it to some past
experience of sorrow, or with a futuristic fear of sadness. Without the
opposite feeling, happiness doesn’t hold any meaning individually. We feel
happy when we plan to meet a friend after a long time because at that very
moment, we feel the sadness of not having met him/her in the last few days or
months. We feel happy when we spend time with a close friend because of the
fear of parting and the loneliness that will follow. Strength, superiority,
absolute power- all these are felt only when we can relate ourselves to someone
weak, inferior or powerless. We feel strong after defeating someone in a fight,
but that feeling of strength also generates an emotion equal and opposite- the
feeling of weakness, if we were to counter someone with superior strength
compared to us.
People relate the happenings in their lives with different
situations. We feel contentment and gaiety after a hard day’s work, but
sometimes, even if we toil all day long, a smile does not appear on our faces. The
latter often happens when we relate our hard labour not with what we earned or
achieved, but with the time and effort it took for us to achieve it. Heartbreak
might lead a person to become a hopeless drunkard, a social outcast- it may
also lead a person to become a Casanova, a ladies’ man. It all comes down to
what that person relates his loss to.
“When you are courting a nice
girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second
seems like an hour. That's relativity.”
~Albert Einstein
