Numbers That Matter

I have always been a lover of numbers. In a world that makes little to no sense, I find sense in numbers. I remember in high school, when I would get bored (that used to happen quite a lot), I would turn to my Mathematics book and just do exercises. Not because I was really good at working out sums, but because I wanted to be really good at it. I loved the challenge and I loved that with Math you were either wrong or right. There was no in between. I also loved the air of importance that came with being really great with numbers. If you went to a Kenyan school, you would know that the Math Congress students were almost like demi-god.  As an FYI, it is not “Maths”, it is Math or Mathematics. Yeah, my love for numbers runs deep.

Now, in my adult life, I have come to learn that, my expertise in geometry, algebra, calculus and the likes were just that. Topics. And that life’s equations are really simple on paper but hold so much more meaning in our hearts and our minds. For example, I have always been attracted to the number 4. It is my favourite number. It has nothing special in how it is written, it doesn’t sing or dance or move or speak a foreign language, but it is special to me. Why? For starters, it is my birth month. It is my house number. It features in my cars number plate, and when I call and the phone rings four times, I hang up. I sometimes do things in multiples of four. It may be obnoxious but it is my number, and it matters to me.