Why Math is Beautiful

I am not a math person. But I do understand the beauty of it to those who are. The beauty is that it is an escape form the chaos of life. Where so many things are uncertain math is always the same. It is something we can know and see and it is always true. When people lie math never does.

I love the chaos of life, I revel in the unrest, and that is why I am not a math person. But math is soothing to the soul. It is complex, that is true, but it is a numerical attempt to put into defiant terms a world which is far more complex than math could ever be. And in a way this is a wonderful and beautiful thing. It shows man's will to dominate a world which he cannot control, and his wish for something peaceful and predictable. And this is what math strives to do, it searches for patterns in a world where there seem to be none. Isn't that wonderful?

Restlessness

There is a restlessness in my soul. It dwells within and will not be washed out. It twirls and dances and can be beautiful. But it rages up in great passions and has great fears as well. It feels with the strength that moves mountains. This still restlessness, I feel it so strong, and yet it is so very, very quiet. When it speaks it does so in whispers. This is what drives me to action. When I do anything great it comes from this restlessness. When I fail it is this that catches my tears and morphs them into determination. It cannot be rightly described, not with all the words, but I tell you this. This restlessness, it is good and true. It conflicts my soul and gives me grief and guilt. These unpleasant feelings keep me good and true. I do not always like it, but I do love it.

Invisible Man

I recently finished reading Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. What are my thoughts? Well my first feeling was that I didn't like it. It left a bitter taste in my mouth; the subject was a distasteful one and the sentence structure - by the end - was as if Ellison were grasping randomly at whatever words he could get a solid hold of to build his statements. And I sat, having closed the book, reminiscing on all this and I released that this was just the point, and I found it - in a way - beautiful and romantic. Now this is truly a silly way to describe a book that is so full of chaos and the harshness of racism. But for that brave narrator to become what he was, an Invisible Man, it was mystical. Something like a nightmare. And somehow to me the chaos and the invisible man's peace with it is romantic.

But the rub is this: Ought we be at peace with it?

What so unsettled me is that I don't think we should be so eager to disregard the terrible things of life. And it is true that our great narrater by the end has decided to do just that. But this is hypocritical, because in writing the book he is showing that he does care, and he says again and again how it should not be this way. But then he goes on to tell us that he is at peace with the way of the world that he is found his role and it is to be invisible. He says he has not given up, that he intends to go back into the world, but we all say that "someday I'll go out and do that" but not today. We cannot know that he ever did leave his brilliant hole of defeat. And I find it repulsive that he can be happy within it.

But did he not try all else? And what good was it? I'll say that if actions against evil do anything they will always do good to your soul. That at the least, you've tried. Let us not be content to sit on the sidelines or to relish our captivity. Let us always fight against the chains that bind us. When we grow tired let it turn to motivation and let us be determined. Yes, let us be determined against all opposition and passively furious against the injustices; let us go brave into battle and let us love passionately. And do not forget the enemy. For it is not any man but the evil that lives within all, so that one man is constantly battling the evil within himself and not his brother. Let us never be peaceful against it. No, I do not want peace, I want to forever rage against the dying of goodness.