Albert says, “E=MC2”
Uh oh. Math. Do we have to? Frankly, I’d rather not. But I am feeling very pleased with myself today, and I want to share my happiness.
First let me set the scene by telling you where I am on the Science-Math Continuum. (This isn’t a real thing. I just made it up.) The Science-Math Continuum is a straight horizontal line. On the extreme right of the line are Albert Einstein, Pythagoras, and all those super-brainy ‘math people’ you’ve heard of.
On the far left of the Continuum is… well… me. I’m there in the company of rocks, tables, and other objects that don’t have the vaguest understanding of math and science.
So, my happiness today is rooted in a major accomplishment. I now know what Einstein’s formula ‘E=MC2’ means! Finally! Last week I heard someone explain it.
Energy equals Mass times the Speed of Light squared. Tada! I feel like a world of knowledge has now opened up for me. (Oh, by the way, please don’t ask me what the words in the formula actually mean, because I don’t know. I can’t tell you why knowing how to calculate energy is of any use to anyone, I have no idea what the speed of light is, or why you’d want to multiply it by itself, and the only thing I know about mass is that Roman Catholics celebrate it regularly.)
I heard this explanation of the formula on an audiobook about anxiety that I was listening to. Not exactly where you’d go for a lesson on physics, and it caught me off-guard. The writer, Curtis Chang, explained that the speed of light was fixed and that the mass of an object was variable. (I think Chang is way over to the right side of the Science-Math Continuum.) He used this as a way of presenting to his listeners/readers his own theory of mental health …
Anxiety = Fear of Loss times Avoidance.
Chang used to be the senior pastor of a large church in California before a severe flare-up of his anxiety disorder rendered him completely unable to function. He left the ministry but now serves God’s church in other fulfilling ways. So, his formula is based on his own periods of suffering. Anxiety = Fear of Loss times Avoidance.
Chang came to understand that at the heart of all anxiety is the fear of losing something important – health, safety, happiness, love, people, employment, purpose, whatever. He then identified that the severity of his personal anxiety attacks depended on how much he resisted those fears. Many of the things he feared losing were non-negotiable. It is inevitable that he will lose all of those things – if not gradually over time, then certainly at the moment of death. Whether those fears resulted in a catastrophic bout of anxiety was determined by how willing he was to accept the inevitability of the loss. The more he avoided his fear of the loss, the worse his anxiety became. The more he accepted the possibility of loss, and embraced it, the less his anxiety featured in his life. Keeping loss at arm’s length and refusing to acknowledge its possibility and its power only made anxiety worse.
We started in math and ended in faith. Accepting what is inevitable calls us to throw ourselves on God, whose wisdom is huge and whose plan for us is loving. May the God of peace grant us freedom to embrace our fears and transform them into the means of peace.