Inertia is super strong. What, if anything, is stronger?

My late father-in-love used to say, “more than people know what they like, they like what they know.” People like what they know. They like certainty, clarity, predictability. They don’t like being rattled. They don’t like uncertainty. They don’t like unpredictability. They don’t like staring into a murky future.

The address in our sacred canon for the strength of inertia comes from last week’s reading. When the children of Israel left Egypt during the Exodus, the Torah says they left chamushim. Rashi offers two explanations for that word. One is that they left with arms, as they would need to fight wars on their way to the promised land. But the other explanation Rashi brings is that chamushim is related to the Hebrew word chamesh, five. Namely, only one in five Hebrew slaves chose to leave. Fully four out of five Hebrew slaves chose to remain slaves.

That Rashi is so evocative, so prescient, so rich. Fully 80 percent of Hebrew slaves chose the predictability of slavery over the insecurity of freedom. This despite their moaning and groaning under the burdens of slavery. This despite seeing God’s saving power with their own eyes—it’s dark for the Egyptians, not dark for us; the first-born of the Egyptians perish, our first-born are fine. Despite an interventionist God redeeming them from the misery of slavery, 80 percent of the Hebrew slaves opted for slavery. More than people know what they like, they like what they know. How often has this dynamic played out in Jewish history, with fatal consequences for those who opted to remain where they were. 

Rashi goes on to add that the 80% died in Egypt. Throughout Jewish history, inertia has proven not only strong but deadly.

How does inertia show up in your life? How does inertia show up in our life? What, if anything, enables us to resist the incredible power of inertia? What can we learn from David Brooks’s final piece for the Times about how to resist inertia?

Would you have been the 20%? Or the 80%? Are you the 20% or the 80%?