Long ago, my mom sighed and declared, "Everything is math." I was just a squeak then, and knew nothing of binary code or geometry, or grammar, also known as syntax. I simply knew things. I knew that I liked things, or to be more precise, I knew that I preferred things. I preferred reading to counting. I preferred words to pictures, but I still liked pictures. I definitely preferred words and pictures to numbers, even if those numbers were presented alongside words and pictures. Numbers were for memorizing; words were for comprehending. I do not truly believe that someone "taught" me this (way of comprehending). This, I assert, I knew.
I also assert that before I was ever taught syntax, I knew how to write. This is very clear now, as I'm struggling in syntax class, yet can still write, some might say, beautifully. Once the sentences are broken down into parts, and assigned symbols, language, this thing that I knew, disappears and becomes math, this thing that I do not know. The feeling, the spiritual connection that I have with language, becomes numb. Slowly, when things are explained carefully, I do begin to understand. But it is painful, as that part of my brain has fallen asleep, and the pricks of comprehension sort of tickle and torture my mind.
It is true -- everything is math. Everything is quantifiable. Once, a pseudo-scholar, quite like myself, and I both agreed (with little to no research or evidence) that free will is not quantifiable, therefore God exists in the presence of free will. I don't claim this statement to be true -- but it sounded intelligent at the time (self-comforting rubbish, I'm sure). Whatever its validity, it sort of communicates the feeling I have about math -- its like, I know you math, I know you're here, there, everywhere, but you aren't in my feelings, my spirit(uality), my words. I have a narcissistic relationship with language. I see myself in it, and I feel it reflects me. I think math also has a narcissistic relationship with language. It sees itself through language. Therefore, I also have a narcissistic relationship with math, except that I see math as my shadow side, a reflection of that which I identify with in a positive sense, a negative to the positive reflection. A binary representation of free-floating abstraction. The rigid to my obscene. Why the bit about God? I think it's because it's a tie to the knowing. There are things that I simply knew, without being taught. Is God quantifiable? I'm not really a good scientist. God is both the hardest and easiest thing for me to know.
As the title of this post suggests, I am learning to love syntax, and therefore, math. There are things that make me who I am that I don't like. My shadow side. Math is in there, though it's not as apparent as, say, intolerance, or hypocrisy. I think I have mistrusted math due to its rigidity, it's precise nature. I have always been more attached to Lewis Carroll's idea that a word means exactly what I want it to mean. Oh, there is a science, but there is also poetry. There is choice. There is a place for the abstraction that has no word. There is a look. There is no text where there is a text. I want to imagine that there is a place where there is no math for a word. I imagine this place to be God. I know I create it. I know.
Perhaps the most hopeful thing I can muster is that for something to be both -- the shadow and the material -- it is divine. It is a bond that we can take shelter in. Perhaps the key that unlocks the great mystery of the collective unconscious. Certainly, certainly, it is special. For me, it is home.
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