wondering mathematician: chronicles, pt. 3
Originally written November 9, 2023
Part 3 of a 4-part series
It’s not like I’m in a place of desperation.
I’m very happy. Most things are working! Sometimes I wonder how they could possibly keep working for a sustainable, distant, lengthy duration, but for now, they are mostly working.
I think I am trying to be a noticer, a scientist, a questioner, a mathematician. I want to be alert and aware. I’m sensing a greater need for stronger and deeper self-compassion. It’s important to look your life – and yourself – in the eyes and stay conscious and in tune with what your todays look and feel like.
To ask:
how am I doing?
what do I need?
what’s working and not?
how does this add up?
I think being an adult is so hard because when things aren’t going well, of course there’s discomfort, unhappiness, and pain. And then when things ARE going well, there can still be the challenge of finitude and the friction of constraints and the dogged question of capacity. Ability vs. enjoyment. Production vs. rejuvenation.
Time.
You cannot stretch time.
If you have outgrown your jeans – if there is now “more” of you than what fits – you can get new jeans.
But not time.
If the addends make a higher number than the sum, you know either your addends are wrong or your sum is wrong.
Even if they aren’t wrong, they can’t go together. They aren’t a match.
With twenty-four hours in the day and thirty hours worth of important activity, there isn’t something wrong with what it is you find important; maybe every bit of it is valid and lovely, useful and enriching, fun or important.
But it won’t fit.
You can’t stretch time.
So if you have thirty hours of needed/wanted activity, but a sum total of twenty four available, you’ll have to make some selections.
Decide: to cut off.
Literally. The root translation of decide is to cut.
Some things must be cut out, not because they aren’t good or right or important… but because they can’t all be a match for the sum total.
I think being an adult is so hard because you are the only one who can decide for you. No one else can do this work. No one else can show up in your todays and live each of them – the good, the bad, the delightful, the hard, the wanted, the needed. No one else can rest for you. No one else can make eliminations or additions. No one else can solve your math.
Only you know your math. Only you know what fits. Through living, feeling, noticing, experimenting, and trying again.
We know by showing up for ourselves, as compassionate best friends, as scientists, as wonderers.
What do I wonder today?
