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Ravi Lingineni

Published Apr 18, 2020

I Hate Numbers

prose on numbers and how they take over our lives

I hate numbers. They take the fun out of everything.

You’re born on a date. And what is a date? A combination of numbers - yuck.

Do you remember that you had a a table of them to memorize growing up?

Slowly they start to take over your childhood. Hey, what did you get?? Tough luck huh. How about for question number…

By the way - did you know that there are 2 kinds of numbers - the Reals and the Imaginaries. We don’t use the imaginary kind - those are for the dreamers.

As you climb through the ranks - uh I mean grades - err see what I mean. Everyone becomes a number.

Soon there are too many numbers and we start to talk in averages. Above average, Below average. Seriously, it’s kind of mean. So we say cum laude.

Honestly, you’d think the madness would end at school, but you can’t get to your next destination without numbers.

Oh - I totally forgot to introduce you. Meet Mr. Money, his entire life is a number. He’ll speak for your success going forward.

Finally, we make it to work. Just another day. Don’t worry the entire team is working together. We just need to hit a target.

Can you tell me what metric you’re using? Are we measuring the right things? C’mon let’s go go go. Drive that number higher.

And slowly … the money grows. The metrics go up. The dates go by - and a single life becomes two.

Congratulations on making it this far - there isn’t much more I know.

So I’ll just jump to the end. Because your heart. Your one heart - starts its final countdown.

And you say - “Heart - I still haven’t learned what makes you happy. But I can tell you that we have the best numbers. We did it old pal. We won.”

Do you really hate numbers?

Well, when you use numbers to measure everything, it can be overwhelming. From social media likes to the weight on your scale, they seem to define whether you fit in or not. Everything is just a stat. And sometimes in chasing perfect numbers, we lose sight of what we actually care about and all we get left with are numbers