An Equal Life

I like math.

 

I wouldn’t go as far to claim to be an Euler or Pythagoras. No, I probably won’t have a postulate or theorem named in my honor.

 

I think it’s the idea of balance and symmetry that appeals to me. I think it’s the idea that every problem has a solution—if only one digs deeply, searches widely and thinks outside the isosceles triangle.

 

Our lives are like one gigantic math problem. You know the kind…one of those complex ones that fill a chalkboard with sigma notations, Greek letters and squiggly nomenclature.

 

At the assumed end, there’s an equal sign and then an answer. Sometimes, the “answer” on the right is as long and cumbersome as the figures preceding it on the left. But the premise is always the same: the left side equals the right. What occurs on one side of the fence is equivalent to the other side. If not, you have an inequality.

 

I was at the funeral of an acquaintance once. Her death was sudden for me—I was unaware of her illness.

At her funeral, I sat and listened as various speakers shared their special anecdotes. I found the experience a bit jarring—what I heard didn’t match up with the woman I thought I knew.  Could it be that I simply hadn’t taken the time to get to know her? We’ve all heard the phrase, “This doesn’t add up.” In this case, it wasn’t an issue of mathematical operations. She had lived an unequal life. What was thought on one side of the equation, didn’t balance the other side.

 

I wish to live an equal life. No surprises should occur at the end. No skeletons should turn the closet door knob and dance in the light. I hope to be as real, open and genuine as I can possibly be.

 

Often, folks are scared to be real, open and genuine. Perhaps they fear rejection or criticism. Maybe they like being hid—even if the hiding is from themselves. Maybe they don’t know who or what they are.

 

I read a poem in 8^th grade that has stuck with me all these years.  I can’t recall the author’s name.  It goes:

 

A single rose,

Stood all alone

Surrounded by

A wall of stone.

 

All around the rose,

Other roses grew

Yet neither knew

The others grew.

 

So often we,

Like roses dwell

Too deep within

Our human shells

 

And pass through life

Not understood

Nor making

All the friends we should

 

I would like to change that last stanza to:

 

And pass through life

Not fully being

The creature God

Designed us to be.

 

You know, a rose with its thorns is beautiful all the same.

 

Here I am—I flawed vessel, yet beautiful in the hands of the One who created me.

 

Our lives are indeed like a long math problem. It unveils and scratches its symbols on slabs of slate as we live each day.

 

There’s a solution to the problem our life creates. It’s a narrow road that few pass. It’s a search for undiscovered territories in time. It’s thought arrived at ingeniously and retrospectively.

 

Perhaps an axiom will not be named after me or after you. But like famous mathematicians of the past, each of us will leave definite life prints in the cement of time.

 

I pray yours resonates an equal life.