The Saturday Evening Post published my latest column, Life Inertia: Like an Asteroid Hurtling Through Space. Much like Sir Isaac Newton’s Law of Inertia (“A body at rest tends to remain at rest. A body in motion tends to stay in motion. Bodies will continue in their current state, whether at rest or in motion, unless acted on by a greater outside force”), this column explores my Law of Human Inertia: “The tendency of people, having once established a life trajectory, to continue on that course unless acted on by a greater force.”

Like an asteroid when it first breaks away from a larger celestial body, great forces — in our case, genes, parents, community, and society — are exerted on our lives from inception. People, like asteroids, are set on a path by those early forces and continue on that path throughout their lives, for better or worse, unless other forces are exerted on it that alter their course.