Newton’s Law & The Power of the Pause
“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
We’ve all heard it. Newton’s Third Law. A staple from school science lessons and desk toys with swinging silver balls. In the physical world, it’s an unbreakable rule: when one object exerts a force, another pushes back with equal strength in the opposite direction.
But what if we look at it through a different lens – not physics, but the way we deal with life?
Let’s say you’ve just hung the washing out and the heavens open. Or someone cuts you up in traffic. Or you find yourself in a queue going nowhere fast. Those things are the actions – the events that hit us. And more often than not, our response is immediate and matched in intensity: a groan, a flash of anger, a muttered swear word. It’s our own little version of Newton’s law – equal and opposite.
In those moments, it can feel like we’re reacting on autopilot. The action comes in, and the reaction goes out. Just like two objects in motion. Quick, instinctive, and with just as much force as the thing that triggered it.
But here’s the difference. We’re not objects. We’re not a tennis ball bouncing off a wall. And unlike Newton’s laws of motion, we’re not stuck with an automatic response. We can pause. We can breathe. We can choose how we respond. And that’s where this little idea of mine comes in: The Action–Reaction Void.
Now, Newton’s law still applies in the physical world – push something, and it pushes back – but in the world of emotion, there’s wiggle room. There’s a gap. A void. A moment where we don’t have to react with equal force. We can sit with it. Hold it. Let it just be there for a second before we respond. And in that pause, there’s power. Real power.
This is where we can take Newton’s Third Law and twist it ever so slightly. Yes, there’s an action. Yes, a reaction will come. But we get to decide what that reaction looks like. It doesn’t have to be instant. It doesn’t have to match the force. And it doesn’t have to be equal or opposite. We’ve got something better: the void.
The Action–Reaction Void: my blueprint to patience
For the best part of 60 years, I’ve reacted to things pretty quickly. Whether it’s someone pulling out in front of me on the road, something going wrong with the business, or just a general sense of things not going the way I’d like… my default has usually been frustration, if not outright anger.
To clarify, it’s never been explosive rage or anything dramatic, but that internal spike – clenched jaw, muttering under my breath, that sort of thing – has been a constant companion. Oh, and some swearing. Ok, ok, a lot of fecking swearing!
But recently, I’ve started to dig into that a bit more. Why the need to react instantly? Why does anger so often seem like the first stop on the emotional train line?
I’ve spent much of my life reacting to situations when anger could rear its ugly head. Not violently or dramatically, but instinctively – fast, sharp, usually with a touch of frustration or irritation. It’s been a reliable reflex whenever something went wrong, didn’t go my way, or just rubbed me up the wrong way.
One of the things I’ve been working on for a while now is changing my default reaction to anger. So I’ve been developing a technique for widening the gap between something happening that I wasn’t expecting, and how I deal with it. It’s not a fancy new philosophical theory, just a simple idea, triggered by my study of Stoicism, that seems to work when I actually remember to use it.
For as long as I care to remember, I’ve been quick to react – usually with frustration or outright anger – when things don’t go the way I want them to. But I’ve come to realise (finally) that this automatic response isn’t helping anyone, least of all me. Most of all me.
Over time, I’ve come to see that reacting quickly doesn’t serve me. It rarely fixes anything, and more often than not, it just adds fuel to whatever fire is already smouldering. What’s helped is something I’ve come to call The Action–Reaction Void. And for me, it’s becoming a blueprint to patience.
The idea is simple. Between the thing that happens (the action) and our response to it (the reaction), there’s a tiny moment. A blink. A breath. A fraction of a second. But it’s there. And it’s in that small, often-overlooked gap that we’re handed an opportunity.
That space – that void – is where everything can change.
At first, the void feels invisible. Things happen and we react without thinking. But once you start noticing it, and deliberately stepping into it, something interesting happens: you realise that you can stretch it. That gap doesn’t have to be a flicker; it can be a chasm.
What if, in that void, you asked yourself a question?
What if you considered another perspective?
What if you imagined the consequences of saying the thing you’re about to say?
What if, just for a second longer, you thought about how little this might matter tomorrow?
I wrote a song, years before I started studying Stoicism, called “What If?”. It’s literally about “what if this happens.” The whole song is about the action side of this blueprint, and offers no reaction. It’s based on a relationship between two (imaginary) people, but reflecting on it now – some four years after writing it – I guess it’s about the fact that shit happens and we can’t do anything about it. But we can very much determine the outcome of how we accept that it happened.
This is it anyway (kind of out of its full context without hearing the melody, but maybe I’ll get round to recording it sometime):
What if?
What if I should die right now.
Fall right down beside you, not even take a bow.
What if I should leave this place.
Crash right to my knees without a final warm embrace.
What if I should die right now.
What if I should miss that bus.
Running through all weathers sleet or snow or dust.
What if I should miss that train.
Doors that slide before us to a self-imposed refrain.
What if I should miss that bus.
What if, what if my friend, what if, we hit the bends.
What if, what if this ends, right now.
What if I should let you down.
Say something stupid and be swallowed by the ground.
What if I should judge it wrong.
Lose you and confine you to the words of a song.
What if I should let you down.
What if, what if my friend, what if, we hit the bends.
What if, what if this ends, right now.
What if I should walk away.
Leave you with your tears as I have the final say.
What if I should break your heart,
Lying in the dirt where I tore it right apart.
What if I should walk away.
What if, after seven years.
We don’t share our hopes and fears.
What if, what if I die, will I even hear you cry.
What if, what if my friend, what if, we hit the bends.
What if, what if this ends, right now.
Getting back to the gap between the above actions and our response: in essence, when we stretch that void, we make space for choice. Instead of running on old programming – anger, anxiety, or defensiveness – we can pause, recalibrate, and choose something better.
And here’s the powerful bit: the bigger that void gets, the more room there is for us. For our values, for our experience, for the person we want to be in that moment. The bottom line is that things happen and we cannot control that. Our only control is how we react.
In a practical sense, that might mean taking three deep breaths instead of snapping. It might mean saying nothing at all until you’ve walked away and had a cuppa. It might mean mentally stepping outside of yourself and asking: “If I wasn’t in this situation, what would I see?”
We don’t get to control the actions that come our way – not always. But we absolutely can shape the reaction, if we allow the void to exist, open it up, and then choose to live in it for a moment (or moments) longer than usual.
So now, when something triggers me, I’m trying to slow it all down. I remind myself: Here’s the action. Now, don’t just react. Sit in the void for a moment. And in that space, I try to ask questions. What else could be going on here? Is there another explanation? Why did that person do or say that? Could it be that they are affected by something outside their control? Is this even worth getting wound up about?
The Stoics taught that we need to accept that bad people are just out there. They always will be. (Of course, actions aren’t always caused by bad people – a myriad of other things can cause actions.) I sometimes say to myself, “Ah, there it is,” meaning I knew something was going to happen today; I just didn’t know what it would be, or who would be doing it, or what form it would take.
So if it’s a bloke in a blue BMW cutting me up and driving like a dick, I try to say, “Ah, there he is. That’s what he looks like, and he’s driving a blue BMW like a dick. I didn’t know he’d be driving a blue BMW.” And I’ve become quite good at smiling during this thought process, instead of getting angry or reacting badly by driving like a dick in retaliation. The more I think these thoughts and expand on them, the bigger the void becomes and – in all honesty – most of the time, the less important the action feels.
This approach isn’t about suppressing anger or pretending everything’s fine. It’s about understanding it. Using the void to process instead of explode. Choosing how I respond, rather than just following old habits.
It’s a Stoic idea at heart. The Stoics were all about mastering your internal state, rather than being thrown around by external events. They didn’t say “never feel anything,” but they were big on not letting those feelings control you.
For me, this is Stoicism in motion. Not the stiff-upper-lip stereotype, but the quiet practice of owning your reactions – of not letting the outside world dictate your inner state.
It’s not easy. But it is simple. Notice the gap. Step into it as if it’s a cave. Stretch it. Make it a bigger cave. Imagine there’s a comfy armchair there. Sit in it. Relax. Consider what just happened. See how the anger can start to fade?
That’s the blueprint I’m following anyway. And slowly but surely, it’s helping me rewrite the script I’ve followed for decades.
Because while the moment between action and reaction might start as a sliver of time, we have the power to make it wide enough to walk through – and come out the other side calmer, clearer, and in control. I still swear a lot though. Often whilst smiling.
Taking Newton a Step Further
What I love about bringing Newton into all this is that it shows how we can flip something so rigid into something flexible. His law talks about action and reaction being equal and opposite. But with The Action–Reaction Void, we’re not just responding to something – we’re transforming it.
The action might still come with a bit of force. Someone’s rudeness, an unexpected delay, the dog being sick just as you’re leaving the house. All of it still lands. But what we do next is where we take control. Instead of lashing back with equal energy, we sit with it. In the void. And that moment gives us a chance to respond with clarity, not reflex. Not because we’re ignoring what’s happened, but because we’re choosing to do something more useful with it.
The reaction, then, doesn’t have to be equal. It can be better. More constructive. Calmer. Or sometimes, nothing at all.
In doing that, we actually make the reaction more powerful than the action. Not in volume or emotion, but in impact. Because now it comes from us – not just from the situation. We’ve stepped out of the automatic cycle and created something intentional.
That’s what The Action–Reaction Void is really about. It’s not about being passive, or pretending things don’t get to us. It’s about realising that our strength lies in what we do next. And when we use that space – even just for a few seconds – we can turn Newton’s Third Law on its head. Our response becomes something chosen, not forced. Something measured, not matched.
And that, for me, is where the real force lives.