Calculating tips. Optimizing the dimensions of a pen with a set amount of fencing. Long division. Taking integrals and then differentiating them to get the original equation. (For some, it’s a manner of checking an answer; for me, it’s an uncontrollable compulsion to bounce between functions and their nearest cousins.) Reduced row echelon forms of matrices. Row operations in general. Contorting a differential equation into a function of u and delving into it for an implicitly derived form of another function—its second cousin perhaps, not its first. Finding derivatives using the limit as h approaches zero of the area between the function and the same curve just to the right, dividing by that small bit, making that sliver slimmer and slimmer until it’s just a line below the curve with no discernible area but, rather, just a straight, vertical line with one end reluctant to simply end at a point as a line should and, instead, craving to express its slight curve, but it’s still a point, but a point with a mood, an essence, an instinct to crave to climb slightly higher, to reach much higher, to descend, or to relax and stay put. This line segment’s upper endpoint—or it might be a lower endpoint, a reflection in the x-axis’s negative landscape, a very different set of cousins, cousins to points rather than to functions, cousins you wish were their positive cousins; or perhaps they should be twins, fraternal not identical—it has expression that other branches of the family of points—those that lack any function to give them guidance, purpose. At first glance, it merely appears alone of any tangential indication but, in its most microcosmic shape, bears true signs of prediction, of divination.
Math possesses magnificent qualities and intricacies, intricacies that you don’t know unless you move closer to it, delve deeper into it. There are, indeed, miracles of nature—as there are in the rings within a tree trunk, in every genus and every species of flora and fauna, and in a human brain and in a human heart—in math. Metaphorical links and emersions of a trunks from networks of converging roots hidden beneath fertile soil that allows for these inflexible truths to arise from thousands of seemingly unrelated fragments of discoveries.
Yes, I’ve, reluctantly or not, accumulated a passion for math.
And, to take a brief and likely thankful detour from this monotony about how spectacular math is—believe it if you wish, or don’t—I’d like to make it clear that I do not have a passion for numbers in the same way that I do math. Because math is not about numbers. It begins this way: 1 + 1 = 2; 1 + 2 = 3; and so on. However, before long, we see: a + 1 = 2; a = 1. And then we see, far later perhaps: log2 8 = 3 and ln(e7) = 7. The numbers begin fading. And, even now, I stare at: “xi = det(Ai) / det(A) for i = 1, 2, …, n.” I see two numbers there. If perhaps we replaced A with the matrix that it is intended to represent, we may see many more, but here, on the board at the front of the room and now in my notebook, I see just the two—the first two numbers we learn, 1 and 2.
As the numbers fade, letters replace them, as the “A” above takes the place of potentially infinite individual whole numbers. And, here, I realize just how much I am passionate about letters—the easy-going nature of an "R" as it rounds outward, clockwise, and then bounces downward, toward a point just below the line on the page, the foot of the "t" so often emphasized in math for differentiation from a plus-sign, created with a brief, last-moment swoosh of the pen to the right before crossing it. Cursive letters—my second favorite lesson in third grade. I remember seeing in my notebook countless pages of reiterated alphabets, all identical in meaning but possessing slightly adjustments in the starting points or endpoints or in the strength of each curve and the letters' connections. In this way, math—though I previously perceived it as a restriction, a necessity, and an inconvenience standing between me and my bachelor's degrees—has become a source of reaffirmation of my passion for writing, for reading, for sentences, and for words. In my mind's eye, I often see the equations on the board, on the page, and in my mind stripped of the 1's, 2's, and the rest of their antagonistic family, showing me a sentence as clear as benevolent as those of Cloud Atlas.
I have also seen, in this, how I and perhaps others choose our passions. The more I soak in the x's and t's and e's in my math classes and the more I block out the numbers, dismiss them as secondary—and the more I read—the more I re-instigate my passion for writing. Spending twenty years in a world of words, stories, characters, settings, and perspectives has honed my passion in on this one action, this single aspect of nature out of all the millions it offers and whenever my passion for writing fails to surface in a lull, reading serves as a nearly instant revitalization.
Everything in the world—math, reading, writing, letters, numbers, sociology, video games, acting, politics, animal training, playing football—has sufficient reason to acquire the label "our passion" and—though we can hardly be aware of even a single percent of our options or even make the decision consciously—it is entirely tasked to us which we choose to submerge our life in.
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