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Doing and thinking about math is a kind of mind cleanse for me - much like meditation, but not quite. It’s not a rest of mind, but a sharpening. It’s not about discipline of mind, but about clarity of thinking. It’s a kind of thinking so far removed from our usual world, so contained in its own abstract rules, I feel it brings me to a nearly abstract mode of thinking itself. The essence of problem solving, the problems having no ‘meaning’ beyond themselves. Problem solving for the joy of problem solving. Math’s abstraction is discipline of thought. The rules are clear. There are no excuses. Maybe that is why it can be so intimidating when taught in school: You have no where to hide, you can’t make up for not knowing the answer, or a way to get there, there is no ‘improvising’, because thinking is what it’s about in the first place.
Some of this clarity shines through to the rest of my life when I do some math on a regular basis, sometimes I can look at my problems as if they were problem sets. This is not the optimal way to go through the whole of one’s life, obviously, and I in no way want to deprecate the importance of feeling and the nitty gritty of life, but today I’m writing about math and what doing it does to me. But this detached, clear view is a perspective that can be immensely valuable in solving out bad situations, when you need to take a deep breath and to view it all from above.
If that doesn’t make any sense - maybe I’m just justifying myself liking math as a ‘humanities person’. But I really do…