Am I Awake?
How did I even get here?
It started with a dark forest, one that I could not get out of alone. I almost died and underwent several emergency surgeries. It was such an uncommon mixture of events and happenings that it was hard to find suitable help afterwards, but I had to exhaust every possibility before giving up.
It started with the deep want to understand psychology, which opened the door to bits of neuroscience. I probably should have stopped there. Alas, the journey began and philosophy likes to invite itself on little journeys. It also arrived with an entire library that just generates more rooms for itself. I have formalized a complaint about this but I don’t know where to file it.
I learned more of my perception of language, and that many deep thinkers eventually contend with it. Sideways slides a book across my desk: Gödel, Escher, and Bach, the Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter. I’m still working through it, taking my time and making detours. I decided to learn mathematics informally if only to understand Gödel’s portion of the book more easily (I didn’t know Hofstadter would explain it himself before all this, ridiculous am I).
Of all the departments of mathematics, I knocked first on the door of Silvanus Thompson’s Calculus Made Easy. Another mistake. The things we can do with calculus, the things we predicted with it. In comes flying Quantum Enigma by Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner. My friends… should anyone decide to venture into quantum mechanics, please bring a satchel. Its where I keep all my confusion and a tiny white flag. It’s basically one gigantic—is it an AND or is it an OR—problem.
You’d think that this would be enough. Apparently not. Twirling in from the left field comes A Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung. Waddling behind it were entire mythologies, visitations with my old discipleship days, and wondering why the occult and Buddhism are happily shaking hands. This is where I realized I was starting to collect books that I’d never finish. I’m still arguing with my subconscious about this.
You’d THINK, you’d think this was enough. Perhaps it was time to just relax instead of creating an entire curriculum for myself. When I wasn’t paying attention, A Mathematical Theory of Communication by Claude Shannon appears and patiently waits for its turn. Thanks to that, I’m now tickling the pages of a textbook about discrete math as well. There are more books, merciful stars, there are more books.
What on Earth am I doing? Who did I think I was?
So, I’m over here making jokes out of mathematical terms, trying to understand the world through my own form of thinking, making up new terms no one asked me to make, and bothering the internet with my stories just so I can compress what I learned. “She probably induced insomnia for herself,” you’re probably thinking. I did, but not for this. This is how I learn and I like it.
No. The thing that keeps me up at night is a question that visits like an incubus that only covets existential dread:
What if I’ve not woken up, yet? What if I’m in a coma, and this is just a dream?
