Sorrow in itself is a neutral state. From all his observations which the author has made with the help of his sense experiences in this natural world, he makes two postulates. First that sorrow is inversely proportional to the mental distance at which one is from that sorrow. Secondly the gradient of sorrow with respect to time is directly proportional to the pain which one feels. Both these are pseudo-rational-quasi-emprirical observations which the author has made and some examples will be given to further elaborate these points. One more thing, here sorrow refers to what lies out there waiting for you to grab it, and pain is what you get, when you grab it; along with the standard definitons which exist and can be looked upon in any Oxford.
So coming back to the first postulate, sorrow being inversely proportional to the mental distance between the perceiver and the sorrow. A dog or a man might be dying outside one's door, but for him/her, if he/she is not aware of it, there is no sorrow there, because practically the mental distance between the two things is so huge, that sorrow boils down to zero. A person reading this article will again be unable to perceive the sorrow which the author might have been facing which forced him to write such an article, again because of the huge distance. When the distance is less the sorrow is more, when the distance is huge, the sorrow is less. Again, this is just an idealization; the actual mathematical relationship would be too difficult to even think of. Also one must not confuse this with the ordinary day-to-day usage of this word, exclaiming that he/she doesn’t feels anything even when there are so many terrible things(with a non-zero magnitude of sorrow) happening around them. Sorrow is not what one feels, pain is the feeling part, sorrow lies there outside with a magnitude depending upon the distance.
Coming to the second postulate, regarding the gradient of sorrow and pain. This is pretty obvious. For a person dying out of hunger in Somalia, one didn’t feel any pain, whatsoever just before he/she read this line, and now after reading this there might be some magnitude of pain. Why has this happened? Initially when the distance was large(initial time moment), the magnitude of sorrow was less, when the distance became less(final time moment) because of one's mental awareness shifting towards Somalia, the magnitude increased. Hence, there is a gradient {(SORROW*final-SORROW*initial) / (change in time)}, which results in pain. One might say at this point, that we can directly say that pain is simply proportional to the final magnitude of sorrow. This point can be explained in the following manner. We multiply the denominator and the numerator of the given gradient by (change in distance), what we get is
{(SORROW*final-SORROW*initial) / (change in distance)} *** {(change in distance) / (change in time)}
*** stands for multiplication.
Now the second term here is the mental velocity (if we suppose the existence of such a term). Now for a given value of initial and final sorrows and the distance being fixed by external circumstances we can say that pain become proportional to the mental velocity. Now this may appear counter-intuitive at first, because if asked to think one would usually say that thinking for a long time gives more pain{(contemplation)(less mental velocity)} and quick jumps of the mind from here to there{(Somalia for one instant, Palestine for other)(high mental velocity)} gives us less pain. But what actually happens is that when one sits for a while and thinks slowly, one can find the reasons for sorrows, and that’s when the magnitude of sorrow decreases(this is because of some other factors which were not included in the earlier equation for sorrow). The author, here has no intention to say that all sorrows present in the world can be justified, but still one can find answers, if one wants to find answers. Again, when one jumps at sorrows quickly or directly(high mental velocity) , the magnitude of pain is bound to be more.So, the second postulate is more-or-less correct considering some exceptions and idealizations of course.
The point of theorizing all this is stated next. Consider an individual X. That person X is surrounded by a circle of sorrows(Remember that circle here is only an idealization, because if we assume its a circle, then from the first postulate, the magnitude of all sorrows must be same, which is not necessarily true, so we can say its rather a closed figure with an idealization as a circle).As long as the person is at the centre of the circle of sorrows, he/she doesn’t feel any pain whatsoever, the pain arises only when he/she tries to move in the circle as if trying to cross over that circle. When X is at the centre; all the sorrows acting on him/her from all sides, balance each other. As soon as X changes his position , the magnitude of the various sorrows changes(first postulate), due to which there is a gradient, and due to which there is pain(second postulate).Imagine a heretic, who lives in the centre of the community which has declared him a heretic. Suppose that the person doesn’t wishes to be so, rather its because fate has made him a pawn in its hands. As long as the person lives in his home, remain confined to his own world, there is no pain. He is happy with whatever he is doing; nothing bothers him. Its only when he moves out, when he sees the outside world then the equilibrium is disturbed, hence pain.
Another situation can be when a segment of that circle breaks, i.e. somehow a part of the circle goes missing. In such a case, there will be an inherent tendency to run away from such a static circle, but that would again result in a lot of pain. So another possibility props up, thereby stating that if somehow the person involved is able to reconstruct that part, then the state of equilibrium would be attained. That is the stage when we start looking around, searching for sorrows, get some novel ones, manufacture artificial ones, borrow somebody else's or take the sufferings of the entire human race as an excuse. So that, once again the circle is complete.
