Heavenly Math

It has been awhile since I have posted, but I have had trouble being passionate enough about something to write about it, but then, while cleaning out my studio, I came across my college portfolio. It flipped open to a essay I wrote in a math class for teachers, about four years ago.......it was suppose to show us that math is important because we use it daily without even realizing it. It is not my normal style of writing, but I remember how it popped in my head the instant the teacher assigned it and how fun it was to write. I was also reminded, from the written remarks of the teacher, who was a high school principal, that he enjoyed it so much he shared it at the monthly principals meeting in his district. It motivated me to start some drafts of other essays and to get back in the process of writing for the joy of it.

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There once was a boy named John who loved math. He equated everything in life, from the lamp posts that looked like number sevens, to the geese that flew in triangular formation over his house in the fall, into mathematical equations. For fun, John solved the hardest mathematical problems he could find and when he found himself stumped by an especially difficult one, he would go to bed early knowing that the answer would come to him in his mathematical dreams.

Then one day, while John was attending the mathematical university that he had always yearned of, a tragic accident occurred. Train A, with his mother aboard, left the station at 12:00 PM and was going at a speed of 80 MPR, Train B, carrying his father, left the opposite station at 1:00 PM going 60 MPR, but instead of passing each other at point X, the track operator made a huge mathematical blunder by solving instead for point Y, the trains collided, killing everyone on board.

John could not understand how something like math, that had brought him such great joy throughout his life, could become so completely devastating. From that point on, John tried to erase math from his life. He decided he had to leave college, because math was no longer a friend but a deadly enemy. He had to quit his job, because he could no longer live by the clock with its numbers taunting him. Telephones and computers were cast out from his life because they were created and run by math related technology. Plus there was no need to work because money and its mathematical addition, subtraction, percentages, etc, were a a constant reminder of his tragic loss. He had to leave his house when he realized that the engineering and architecture used in creating it was all mathematical in origin. He could not even eat a pie because no matter how you cut it, it involved fractional math.

He moved to the country away from all humans to live in a land free of math. However, when he got there he realized he had made a big mistake, for math was everywhere in the wild of nature. It existed in the number of offspring each species had in relation to what the land could support and also in the changing of the seasons, from fall to winter to spring to summer, that could be evaluated using mathematical equations. As he hunted with a bow and arrow he realized the physics involved in its use and threw it down in disgust. He dug himself a hole that was neither square, no round, nor octagon, and crawled inside waiting to die.

When he reached heaven he was welcomed by St. Peter, who led him directly to God.

“I have been waiting for you.” said God, “I have seen you suffer terribly during your life time and now it is time for you to have peace. Let me show you the difference between your life on earth and your life in heaven.”

With that God placed before him a diagram of John’s earthly life.
Birth *------------------------------------* Death

John began to cry hysterically when he realized that although he had avoided math during his whole life, in death, his life could be summed up in one of the simplest of mathematical phrases, a line segment.

God however, mistook John’s grief for pain in having wasted his life, and He tried to bring him joy by showing him that from this point forward, John would have eternal life in heaven. But when God laid John’s future before him, Johns sorrow deepened for what he saw was only a mathematical ray.
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The moral of this story is that math is everywhere, even in Heaven :)