Words and Numbers

One of the enduring memories I have from high school is a Year 12 English class. (That was 10 years ago? Sigh. Wow. Anyway.) English was never my strongpoint. I fulfilled the stereotypical Asian’s academic profile, where crunching numbers was logical, doing a science report was logical, but reading Shakespeare and writing essays seemed pointless (why these words no connect?).

I didn’t know how to properly use paragraphs until I started high school. I didn’t understand the craft of putting words together into a text. My attempts back then would be best described as a brain dump without editing. A mishmash of words. The essays I wrote compared well to a novice firing arrows at archery, throwing aimlessly into the distance hoping it’d hit the board, let alone score a point or two.

This particular class was the day mock exams were returned. I expected the worse.

My identity was formed largely on over-achieving, except for English where I stunk. But on this day, that expectation didn’t happen. I was shockingly successful (in and amongst the borderline pass-fail experiences that year). The teacher gently passed the papers back to everyone else in the class. Mine were thrown at my face in sarcastic disgust. The scores were close to perfection. The teacher believed it was a fluke, and I refused to believe it was anything other than a fluke as well.

But for the following eight weeks, more results came back. More Es. Then there was academic achievement in a subject that I’d always been subpar. What the heck is going on? Top-3 in English? Are you kidding me?

Turns out it was a fluke. The actual exam results came back in January. I was at the borderline pass-fail guy my identity taught me to believe. Some things don’t change.

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Backtrack a second — my upbringing was full of numbers, of doing x process and y formula to get z result (where the result was always what it was supposed to be). The logic of numbers, and the clarity of balancing black and red to create zero, made perfect sense. The roadmap to becoming either a mathematician, computer technician, scientist or an accountant was playing itself out like a calculated equation.

With my feeble understanding, I applied that rhetoric to understand the world I live in. Things are either 1 or 0, black or white. Decimal points were insignificant — round that thing to 1 or 0 and assign a value or condition or status to it.

Although this understanding is where I started school, it isn’t where I stand now. That English class was one particular moment where I moved a step away from the 1 or 0. As was my university attendance degree. Or my postgraduate Bachelor of Attendance degree. Or my descent into a sinking black hole that went hand in hand with my education. Understanding that hole meant bridging my context, mind-space and the idea of crossing some arbitrary line into adulthood.

I begun to see the value in words, the plethora of descriptions that were available and that those descriptions couldn’t be assigned a value and scaled from 0 to 1.

What I began to realise was:

• Words tell a story. Numbers seek solutions.
• Words live in a world of shades of grey where complications reign. Numbers view the shades within a logical formula leading to particular outcomes.
• Words have to be read to be assessed. Numbers depict correct or incorrect based on a definitive standard.
• Words can speak in between the words that are actually written. Numbers refute in-betweens, it states what it is.

(Of course, I’ve just demonstrated hypocrisy as I’ve presented words and numbers as two extremes in a dichotomy.)

Although people cannot be defined by just one factor, some prefer words with its strengths/weaknesses. The numbers people shoot in a different direction, facing some challenges and some simplicities in their mindset and approach.

I was brought up as a numbers person, but now live straddled somewhere between the two poles. There are benefits from straddling this ‘line’. But there is also indecision, compromise and confusion.

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And this in-between is where I start this writing project. I have this aversion with calling it a ‘blog’. But I have one selfish ambition from these written pursuits, which is to understand and write away the cliches, platitudes and superlatives I live by and are embedded in my vocabulary. Why do such one-liners exist? Can they be replaced? Would my writing and conversations change?

There are finer points to that ambition, but I’m intrigued to see where this writing takes me. Not in terms of success or numbers or audience, but whether my mindset or thought process changes from contemplating and considering these things.