Memories of Grade 10 Math (As Seen From the Back of Class)

Here I sit

Trying to crunch the numbers of your being

The question you pose echoing off the walls of my mind

I have taken all into account

Your dreams

What you have done and what you have failed to do

And into that formula I ran the sum of all your fears

To perhaps find out why you give the results you do

When I put in the variables of life

Because, as we all know

Fear is behind a lot of things

Yet even after I have caked the chalkboard with dust

Even after I have tore out my hair in frustration

Or filled the wastebasket with paper

I have no clear result

Rather than one figure that sums up who you are

I am left with quite a few

Some which make sense to me

Some which don't but might make sense to you

Some which apply to who you think you are

Some which apply to who you thought you weren't

Yet I have come to a conclusion, my dear

So listen good

(cue the silence)

There is no specific formula to determine who one is

Rather a number of small ones

Which shed light on the bits and pieces of one's being

And somehow fit together to create some form of identity

For you see, we are not one number

But rather a host of them

Each competing for a place of greater importance in the world

Each trying to show their own identity to people

Some becoming predominant in us

Others working in the background yet still existing

And still being important to who we are

Whether or not we like to admit it

We are but a million numbers

So rather than try to make the numbers fit under one identity

Just sit back and let them be

And let yourself live

As many different people

The product of many formulas

That all somehow come across as the 'real' you