People often talk about this thing called Math. It follows a very specific set of rules and has the same answer to the same question (sometimes, even the same answer to more than one question) every time.

I don’t really believe it exists, though. How can the answer to a question be the same every time it’s asked? See, in Mathworld people tell you that 2+2=4.

Hogwash.

That might work with simple stuff, like fingers, or stones, but try such accounting when it really counts. Take generosity with money. It’s been my observation that the people who wind up having the most money are the ones who spend it on other people. Their fistful of dollars lies in an open palm, and come the end of the month, their freezers are just as full as their neighbor’s, even though he’s been keeping a tight count on every last dime. And now he doesn’t have one, while the generous soul still has a pocket full of change he’s plunging his hand into and giving away.

Try it with relaxation. You sit down at 6 pm to wile away an hour playing a computer game. When you look up, it’s midnight. One plus “a little bit more” equals twelve. Where’s your Math now?

Writing time. I can’t tell you the ways in which this multiplies and divides. You sit down, bang out four pages, and nail a concept that’s been eluding you, that you’ve spend hour after hour trying to whittle out of that big block of wood your brain has turned into, using nothing but a keyboard. You figure you’ve spent a couple of hours at least on this pass-through, but when you look at the clock? Twenty minutes.

And vice versa. An hour stretches into five, and you don’t notice until you stand up and all those little spiny things in your back go “Owwww.”

A candle: today I took an old candle, added another old candle, and made a candle. 1+1 = 1?

Cats: 1+1= 5 easily

Dogs: 1+1=8

Neutering a feral dog or cat: $50 = priceless. You don’t have to put anything else into the equation

An Orchestra 1+2+1+4+2 = 1

Speaking of music, a 3 minute song so good that it makes you sit still, doing nothing but listening to it, turns into….. you tell me. Sometimes 3×0=infinity, but those Math people try to say nothing comes from nothing.

A divorce: 2 divided by 1 = 0

As Einstein said, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts.”

Yeah, that. So don’t try and convince me that this thing called Math exists. I don’t believe in it.