I’m not good at math, but I’ll be damned if I leave a math problem unsolved. I don’t seek any problem out, but when I come upon a math problem in my journey through days, I pause until I whisper the answer like a secret learned.
For a long time, I paused just hours at a time. I would come home late, having spotted a math problem in an open textbook covering the lap of my train seat neighbor. I’d ride the train back and forth until I found the answer, and find my wife slumped over a cold unappetizing heap of her day’s work. She was never supportive of my dedication to math problem-solving. She made no effort to understand and she had no interest in seeing the calculations I made alone on the train instead of sitting at the table with her. Sometimes a math problem would arise when we were together, say discount shopping, and my wife would leave me sitting between over-dressed mannequins and never come for me when I had worked out the posed math problem. Instead, I would end up on the train again by myself on my way home.
The real challenge began when the math problems that were thrown at me kept me occupied for days. Adderall, Ritalin, caffeine pills kept me awake and calculating, counting, charting. I grew a beard.
The most difficult math problem I have encountered to date took me 13 years to solve. I stood away from it only long enough to quit my job and, after my wife left me, to move my notepads and supplies to my parents’ garage. Each day, they brought me milk and tea or tea with milk, and I ate bite-sized foods I popped into my mouth one at a time, like skinned grapes, miniature cookies and Bugles.
Once a week, a professional would stop by to help me see the math problem in a new way. “Let’s look at the math problem in a new way,” he’d say. But then he would distract me with questions about my emotions, my self-care, my relationship with my father growing up, and other things which I did not appreciate. During his last visit, he tried to convince me to take a walk outside with him with my notepad and pencil. “Let’s take a walk outside. Bring your notepad and pencil,” he said. That was his last visit.
When I finally solved that rascally math problem, I was 47 years old. “Do you know how much of your life you’ve wasted?” my mother cried as she hugged me tightly in the kitchen. And once she let go, my still warm pencil came back out to solve the math problem she had inadvertently given me.
The most difficult part of any math problem is the most gratifying–figuring out when I have reached the right answer. There is not an answers log for math problems come upon on a train or exclaimed by an exasperated mother. I have to find the end of possibilities on my own. I have to find the absence of doubt. An end like that only exists in math problems. On the nights no math problem came my way, I sat on the train working out whether I was in love with my wife or whether my work was meaningful. If I paused to solve problems like those, I’d be on the train or in my parents’ garage far longer than 13 years. How much of my life would I have wasted?