The Equation of Life

For anyone who watches TV on a daily basis (a luxury that I haven’t had for quite some time now), they would be aware of a show called “Numbers”. The main protagonists of the show were a pair of brothers, one who was a mathematical prodigy & the other was an FBI agent. The FBI agent would seek help from his brother on various cases, which he would assist in their successful conclusion through the use of various & often complicated mathematical algorithms & equations, which would help simplify a given problem or in most cases, solve the case at hand. I bring this up because of a line mentioned during the course of the pilot episode, “Everything is numbers”. Being a journalism graduate who has a fair grasp on the concept of numbers, I found this quite intriguing.
If we were to apply this thought to everyday life, we can find quite a number of scenarios to back that claim up. When you go to the store, every item is categorized through a barcode, which is essentially mathematics. When counting your change at the cash register. When wondering how many porn videos you can rent at the local video store without raising an alarm from the FBI for indecent viewing. When calculating how far indebt you’ll be upon completion of your 4-year college tenure. When wondering how much brown sugar you can put into a particular dessert without destroying its appeal. Yes, everything is numbers, but what about in regard to the human question??
Man, time & again, has shown that it doesn’t adhere to the laws of logic, but rather by its own set of rules that they feel govern the world around them. They have spent centuries conquering the very obstacles that have remained elusive to it until now such as flight, space travel, genetics, evolution etc. But at the same time, it has raged wars, destroyed its environment & committed countless atrocities upon itself for reasons that would defy logic. Personally, after watching the news on TV or the net, I’m surprised that I haven’t suffered a seizure from the sheer illogic of it all.
An example can be seen in a biblical context, where it states that “Thou shall not covet another man’s wife…”, but man will always want something that someone else has, either because of its appeal or simply because of the fact that they know they can’t have it.
Another example would be to take the concept of love, dating, co-ed interaction & apply a mathematical approach to it. The math of it would be as follows:

Man + Woman + Mutual chemistry =Love & happiness & all that crap that you would imagine in regards to happily ever after.

But it’s not that simple because the chemistry is always an elusive matter to understand. A man can claim to want something & go for the complete opposite. The same could be said for women. Neither gender knows what they really want, nor are they in any position to go out & get it. Ultimately, this realm is, like any other, a battle filed where casualties are inevitable, be it casualties of physical or emotional pain.
I can cite endless examples of this, but due to time constraints, as well of the need to avoid sounding like a rant-raving lunatic, I’ll summarize. The problem of using math to predict the future of man is that man is the wild card in the deck of card within existence. Like that card, it is unpredictable, incapable of understanding (I mean really understanding) itself & beyond that, is capable of great devastation to itself & those around it.
We can play & fill out all the applications on facebook just for the hell of it, but neither those nor intense scientific study can predict who we are, what we’re capable of, where we’ll be in 10 years, what type of person we will marry & how we will die (although personally I have entered an agreement to jump off a bridge with a certain individual if things don’t look up, and if that individual's reading this, you know who you are). Most people would probably get cryptic & just say that it is destiny. I personally prefer to believe in fate. The difference is with destiny, your journey in life is pre-planned by some higher power & you can not deviate from it, no matter what. But with fate, only the start & destination is determined. You get there on your own, through your own way & you learn the lessons that come with it.
I suppose that wherever my fate lies, I can only hope that I find happiness there. & that is something that not even the greatest mathematician in the world will never be able to hypothesize.