Maybe you didn’t like fractions when you first encountered them in school. What’s this stuff about turning one of them upside down and then multiplying them? What do you mean I can’t add ½ and 1/3 without changing the denominator? Math was easy until you stumbled temporarily over comprehending these problems composed of parts.
But parts are what we often deal with in life, aren’t they? Once again, because we are finite beings riding the arrow of time, we have to listen to music one note or chord at a time to work our way to the end of a song. Playing every note in the song at once for a single beat would make little sense to us. We actually favor fractions in much of what we do: Entertainment, sports, love. In other words: The score is not the game.
Fractions in life provide us with the joy of getting to the climax or end of something. Fractions provide us with anticipation. We might even think of fractions as anticipation itself, and that makes anticipation a large fraction of every emotion.
Now, here’s where our emotional math goes awry: Although we derive both pleasure and pain from the solution to a problem or event, we also, at least a large proportion of us, try to solve the problem through worry. Worry is not the same as anticipation. Worry already has a solution. Worry doesn’t work in fractions. Worry works with whole numbers. Worry is the score, and not the game.
Be patient. Work with the fractions you're given. Find the common denominator that ties the fractions into a meaningful problem, and you'll see and derive the "whole" without the stress caused by worry.
But parts are what we often deal with in life, aren’t they? Once again, because we are finite beings riding the arrow of time, we have to listen to music one note or chord at a time to work our way to the end of a song. Playing every note in the song at once for a single beat would make little sense to us. We actually favor fractions in much of what we do: Entertainment, sports, love. In other words: The score is not the game.
Fractions in life provide us with the joy of getting to the climax or end of something. Fractions provide us with anticipation. We might even think of fractions as anticipation itself, and that makes anticipation a large fraction of every emotion.
Now, here’s where our emotional math goes awry: Although we derive both pleasure and pain from the solution to a problem or event, we also, at least a large proportion of us, try to solve the problem through worry. Worry is not the same as anticipation. Worry already has a solution. Worry doesn’t work in fractions. Worry works with whole numbers. Worry is the score, and not the game.
Be patient. Work with the fractions you're given. Find the common denominator that ties the fractions into a meaningful problem, and you'll see and derive the "whole" without the stress caused by worry.
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