Measuring Up

For the first time, I'm feeling antsy. Exhausted. I haven't slept well in days. But enough of that.

I was thinking recently about how calculated our society has become. We use numbers to determine our health, our prosperity. If a doctor looked only at a patients chart to diagnose them, there would be much more malpractice. A person's height, weight and heart rate can't tell you how they relate to their family, or how competent they are at work. So why do we still hold these numbers as our sole method of evaluation?

There is a reason we use a clock to tell time. Because living is circular and not linear. What if we pretended that every day was the same. Kind of like Billy Murray in Groundhogs Day. Would we wake up happier if we knew that no matter what happened that day, the next day would be the same exact amount of opportunity? Would we feel less overwhelmed by ambition?

I know that my own linear thinking is a trouble maker. As soon as I got the idea in my head that I only had 3 weeks left here, my mindset changed. I started thinking of the end. I started becoming aware of all the things I needed to stuff into my remaining time. And that's when the antsy-ness entered.

I think this is why I don't like math. There was a quote from Albert Einstein in my Religion, Nature and Ethics book that goes like this:

It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.
-- Albert Einstein