Barring some quirky quantum mechanical effects, everything in the universe adheres to the law of cause and effect. For mechanical systems like planets and galaxies, terra-formations, cue sticks and nine-balls, cars and road kill, the effect follows the cause almost instantaneously.
We see mechanical systems around us instantly reacting to actions, and in proportionate quantities as dictated by Newton's third law and expect everything else to adhere to this guiding principle too. We are sadly mistaken. Newton's law only specifies the proportionality between the action and the reaction; no temporal components figure in the equations. Strangely enough, most interesting effects that we expect to be instantaneous are actually delayed, sometimes significantly.
Causality in the sphere of subconscious driven life-forms is quite tricky. In fact it's so subtle at times, that one mistakes the effect to be associated with another cause making for entertaining movie plots, exciting real life scenarios, sometimes even propagation of misinformation and frustration.
A significant hysteresis is observed in the creation and destruction cycle. The associated delay between most causes and their non-trivial effects is most notably observed with all those actions that cause creation, or generation as their effects. In contrast, actions that cause destruction happen much faster. A classic example is pulling down a house as opposed to building a new one. Razing a construction takes the better part of one day. Building it from scratch can take years. Miscarriages happen in a few minutes, while making a human baby takes nine long months.
A common example of this delayed effect is the phenomenon of weight loss. We expect that we will lose weight immediately after we reduce our calorie intake. The scale doesn't meet our expectations, and in a few days of self-induced starvation, we get depressed because our efforts don't seem to be bearing fruit (even on a fruit-only-diet). In our depression, we binge on heavy "sympathy" food, and end up cheating on our diet. However, this binge, being a destructive action, will show relatively quick results. This quickly leads to more depression and this snowballs into more weight gain, burying us in a ton of icy blues!
If we consider the delayed effect, we would gather up more patience, and starve a bit longer. Mind you, the delay varies per person and the type of action. But, given enough time, we ride the delay, and start seeing effects. Once we lose some weight, this becomes the motivation for continuing the diet. We feel better, look better and this snowballs into a healthy, fit lifestyle. Everyone who diets, sooner or later realizes this delay in the system, but not all successfully wait it out, and get disheartened too early in the game. A related delay is also caused by the stomach sending the "full" signal to the brain. The hormone Ghrelin takes about 20 minutes to get the message to the brain after the stomach is full. Thus we can potentially eat for another 20 minutes before the brain realizes, that we are over-full. If only we eat slowly, then we can tune our wait to eat just the right quantity.
Drugs have a variable delayed effect, making pharmacology a difficult science. An Advil may show effect in 20 minutes, but some medicines can take anywhere from weeks to years, making drug-cure correlation hard. Physiotherapy and psychotherapy too take a relatively longish time to take effect. Similarly, a positive attitude change takes some time to sink in and take root, not just within us, but in our environment. The same effect applies with exercising and working out, studies, new year resolutions, learning a new skill, relationships, love -- in short, anything that can be classified as self-improvement and needs will-power (or sometimes wont-power). Will-power helps us to remain patient in the face of seeming failure, and at the right time, the clouds part, and we are rewarded for our efforts.
A mathematical / feedback-system explanation of the phenomenon follows. Construction seems to be a flat function for some time and then a linear (or sub-linear) function in time, while destruction is often observed to be an exponential decay. There is a significant amount of energy needed to push the steady state into the creative cycle, also called as Activation Energy, in Thermodynamics text books. There is a lot of investment of various resources during the process of creation or growth, as opposed to that of destruction, or decay. Because of the delayed feedback cycle, the energy potential of the system can rise above the safe threshold significantly before corrective action is taken.
Often, the corrective action might overshoot, due to the miscalculation of the magnitude of the differential increase, causing oscillations in the system. The yo-yo diet, the date-rebound, the love-hate relationships, the high-highs and the low-lows are all oscillations due to the delayed feedback. Sometimes, depending to the error in the corrective action and the delay in the system, the entire system can become chaotic, turbulent or unstable, and sometimes even self-destruct. Once the delay is incorporated in the feedback and regulatory equations using damping factors, the system goes back to stable equilibrium.
At the end of the day, it all boils down to patience. In this era of instant gratification -- one-click online purchases, channel surfing, speed-dating, instant messaging and ready-made microwave dinners, we are forgetting patience as a virtue. We no longer enjoy the wait, because someone cuts the wait short for a small fee, and a string attached (in a small font). The thing we forget to see is, that most instant things are also fickle and die much faster. They flicker into our lives and disappear just as fast. The lasting things are the ones we wait for -- the good stuff in life.
--Sandeep Ranade
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