They Call Me the Independent Variable

There's a comfort in math, I've noticed. A solace that comes from the permanence of numbers, of functions. Even the most abstract of concepts is rooted in something substantial...

4 is always 4. It is a quantity, an entity, a value. It will never be anything else.

"What if it's 4.5?" the dim-witted may ask. Well, in that scenario, it's not 4, is it? Just because it contains the digit "4" doesn't make it an actual 4...

I sat down to do my trig homework today and realized exactly how much trust I've put into math. How much faith I've had in the concept of numerical and variable values. I can get up, leave my desk, walk three hundred miles, drive back in a taxi, and the function I wrote on my paper will still yield the same results as they did pre-adventure. Its limits and end behaviour will still be exactly the same. Its intercepts will be identical to the ones before. No matter how many times I blink, it will always be that way.

And for infinity, it will be the same. Forever.

The concept of infinity is one that I love to ponder. Trying to quantify eternity leaves me with a funny, fuzzy feeling in the depths of my chest, as if I've accomplished some death-defying feat with one hand tied behind my back. Such a wonderful feeling.

And so inexplicable! I can't describe the emotions I feel when I try to imagine the unimaginable. Theories beyond my wildest dreams. It's not just for math either, so don't go thinking I'm so bizarre trig-loving freak. It's everything.

So much I know, and so much more I don't. So many secrets I've kept from the world--matched by the thousands the world has kept from me.

Oh, someday, someday... Maybe I'll... Nah.