Thankful... but sad on Thanksgiving

There's a cute (and totally fictional) story that has been circulating on the Internet for years about a physics professor who gives his students a take-home thermodynamics exam with only one question: 'Is Hell is exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?   Support your answer with a proof'.

The rest of the story goes like this:

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools off when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

"First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So, we need to know the rate that souls are moving into Hell and the rate they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Ms. Therese Banyan during my Freshman year, 'That it will be a cold night in Hell before I sleep with you', and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in sleeping with her, then 2 cannot be true, and so Hell is exothermic."

This student got the only A.

The reason I've shared this made-up story with you today is because I've recently started asking myself whether my available time for keeping up with friendships and relationships can possibly be expanding at the same rate as my ever-growing circle of friends and acquaintances... and I didn't enjoy the answer I came up with.

You see, with the daily rat-race of work and family, one can consider him/herself pretty lucky if the actual time left over for social interaction remains static.  But the reality is much less optimistic.

Expressed in mathematical terms, the number of existing and potential friendships/relationships we enjoy during the course of our lives can be expressed as an ever-expanding quantity... while the amount of free time we have to pursue these precious friendships and relationships is, at best, constant... and at worst, a constantly dwindling quantity.

Regardless of whether one understands the math behind the equation... our personal hell comes down to the fact that we lack adequate time to spend with the people whose company we enjoy.

Therefore, though I'm deeply thankful for every friendship and acquaintance I've made in my life... it saddens me to accept that it will likely be a cold day in hell before I find the time to spend with even a fraction of these wonderful people.

Enjoy your turkey... and please don't be too hard on me if I haven't been the kind of correspondent or friend you would have wanted me to be.