Everyone has a basic equation, to live, down pat. It requires adding up breaths, meals, rest, etc. Yet after that result differences in logical calculation. Multiplication, division, subtraction, more addition, all mixed up, everyone has their own formula and variables with their own worth, it’s just bringing constituents together – even the negative – to arrive at an understood result. It’s individualism.

Similarities within formulae, even just single digits shared among multiple different numbers, are the starting point for understanding. Those with closely aligned mental structures and belief systems have more in common than digits, the same multiplier in the same place for instance, while another individual who greatly differs from the aforementioned two in mental structure/belief has all different numbers plus a minus sign where they insist belongs multiplication. 

Understanding is algebraic proximity to a concept that some people simply don’t have. It’s not that they can’t, there are tiered levels of understanding, like children understanding consequence and a president understanding the political ripples caused by a policy decision, one is obviously more complex than the other but both processes stem from replicable understanding. And a child would make a horrible president just as a president would make a horrible child. 

No one can be expected to understand everything. No one should be expected to. Some things don’t fit the formulae we consist of. Algebraic proximity to every other calculation is an idealistic aspiration that, in reality, results in destabilization. A pursuit too large for limited geometry.

Because limits to understanding are what help define you, and us, too, irreparable differences between people would seem to be true as well. Yet, given the dynamic nature of self-modifying formulae, the recalculation of self that occurs with every choice, that’s always only temporarily true. While there’s zero chance of generally understanding  everything and everyone, there remains, on a case-to-case basis, the chance to do just that.

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