Can Math teach us life?

Maybe, it can. If and only if you allow it.

Image credit: Photo by Alysha Rosly on Unsplash

Hey! I’ll tell you my story. The way I wrote & perceive it. Like life, it depends totally on you for how to see it.

Disclaimer: This is not a lecture of mumbo jumbo. Definitely not the one we usually see through media which talks about magical ways to perceive different reality. It’s just about what I thought tonight about life. It can change. It will change.

But, what Mathematics has to do with life? We thought the other way around, right?
Well, as with any subject, when you go deep, your thoughts change. Well, here it should — otherwise there’s no point in diving deep.

I’m the one who thought there’s a single truth. And, scientists are on search for it. Maybe, the so-called Philosophers, Teachers, Preachers, Saints, you name them, are searching for it.
Did my assumption fail? As might have guessed, well, it did..

I’m not a Mathematics expert or neither I claim to be one. So, take this as a commener’s view.
It looks like there is no single truth. Looking back, I’d spent numerous nights defining what is truth. But, that’s another story.

What do I mean? Yes, we just assume axioms all along. What are axioms?
A belief that certain things to be true which cannot be proved. And then, we build different views or rather different worlds accordingly. If you dive into Mathematics, you can see people arguing about different things. And, writing the same thing in different ways. When I saw that, my mind exploded and expanded at the same time. Kinda big bang? maybe ;)

The thing that hit me hard is that. We fail to see how much freedom we have over our life. We can write our own theorems. As long as it matches with formal logic — otherwise you would be called mad, maybe till you prove them wrong. If being mad in other’s perception is fine with you, who cares? You can live with it as long as you’re there to argue for it. No one can prove you wrong.

I intentionally added Perception above. Because this is the place where Mathematics taught me about life. We can write our own theorems. We can believe certain axioms to be true and some as not. If you care about how you look on other’s perception, you can do some modification to your story to make yourself happy/sad, what way you want.

So, we have much freedom on our hands to write our own story. If we perceive someone as our villain, they are. If we see them as our good friend who forgot how to be nice, suddenly, that villain turns into a good old friend of us — who just lost their mind, if you will :)

There’s a saying in my locality.

தீதும் நன்றும் பிறர் தர வாரா
- புறநானூறு

English pronounciation:
Theethum nandrum pirar thara vaara
- Purananooru

Explanation: which is translated by Google and I approve it to some extent :)
Bad and good will not be given by others
- Puram (outside world) | nanooru (400). 400 verses about the outside world.

Is this true? Well, it is, if you allow it to be.
But there’s a catch. You may ask, then what if someone hit me? or do something to me physically, for example?
That’s the beauty. Well, like in, Math or in any other department in science. There’s nothing as complete truth — as far as my understanding.
Either we belive it to be Or if we decide to peek through the reality, it fails at some point.
Here, you can take the famous example of Gravitational theory.
Newton found the theory — as per the perceived History, I would say.
It worked till some point. But with the speed of light, it didn’t. There came Einstein and lot of others who built the theorems / story which matches the reality (upto certain extent) and made the train of Physics move forward.

What’s the takeaway?
You can build your own life, till some point. Here, till the body is hurted deeply that you can’t focus on what you want.
When our theory fails, we can build other theorems on top of it which makes sense of the situation at hand. Or, else we can just be happy already that it did. Your call. The people who lost their minds are very similar to people who decide their story as unique so much so that it crashes with the world of others.
The little difference between them, is just the mad people had lost control over the (pen? which they used to write), or they just believe it to be.

Wow, this is a recursive theory. I can write further. But, I decide to stop here. :)

One suggestion. Try learning Mathematics. If you not already, this time, learn it just for sake of understanding it. You can spend your life on just one theory. Do whatever you want to. But don’t do it for getting marks. Then all the time and energy spent on it will fail for a mere extrinsic motivation — which is bogus.
Something great will emerge out of it. No one knows for sure what is trash and what is gold unless someone proves it to be otherwise. That could be you! Please don’t accept anything just for the sake of accepting it. Try to understand and digest it. If it doesn’t make sense to your story. Throw it away. No one cares.
You have all the freedom to construct the story as per your wish, as long as it doesn’t disturb others’. If it does, you may find yourself opposite of a social authority (police?).
I think that this is important for the growing people, usually teenagers. Who often find themselves confused about what is true and what is not. I don’t have to say anything about their outer world which is constantly trying to make them believe on something to profit from them.

Don’t disbelieve. Don’t believe. Be critical and curious. You’ll one day known what is right for your life.

Alright. Here, we came to the end of this post. For real. :)
I won’t call myself as an expert of any sort in anything.
Please take all these with loads of salt. Wish you a happy day!

Ad: You can click on the underlined words to find a better meaning with context for the verses in Tamil.

இன்று புதிதாய் பிறந்தோம்
- பாரதியார்

Today, We reborn
- Subramania Bharathiyar