issue 31: lessons in calculus
and highlights from Jesus year
There are days where I’m convinced that the most important things in life I’ve already learned in my high school Calculus class.
Things like noticing how a certain logarithmic pattern is all around us – from faraway spiral-shaped galaxies to the spiraling heart of a sidewalk sunflower. Tracing the swirly scales of pinecones and the swirling flight path of a fly.
It taught me to derive the rate at which the ocean is rising, and the temperature at which a cup of McDonald’s coffee is considered dangerously hot (and cost them $3M in punitive damages).
It saw me cry work my way through the most complex problems and equations to arrive at the most simple and elegant solutions.
Ultimately, like all theorems and formulas, Calculus offered a language to understand fundamental principles of nature. The Fibonacci sequence, Euler’s Identity, and the Infinity Series, all point to deeper lessons in life. Something greater than us.
A problem that’s always stuck with me was Zeno’s dichotomy paradox. It argues that before an object can travel a certain distance, it must first travel half of that distance, then half of half of that distance, and so on, ad infinitum, so that the number of “half-steps” needed to traverse the overall path is never-ending.
Of course, that same distance is easily bridged in reality. We take a step forward, and the length between points A and B is immediately covered. But a question remains: is the sum of infinite fractions, then, finite?
The short answer is yes: there are different types of inifinities, and one of them mathematically converges to 1, resolving this paradox. But the practical answer is that distance becomes finite with motion when traveled in time. So infinity is crossed in movement, direction, and time.
It’s just like how our mind will often break up a problem into hundreds of puzzle pieces, without ever solving for it. Endless combinations of “what if’s,” simulations, and predictions. Half steps, ad infinitum. Overthinking, ad absurdum.
Until the moment we decide to take a small, imperfect, and literal step forward. Out of our heads, into our body. Minding the gap, then crossing over.
At the end of the day, distance is only ever traveled in one step, and then another, until the journey leads to whatever endpoint we’ve marked (or not) on the map. Within the limited amount of time we all have. A path that doesn’t exist if you don’t walk it, if you don’t create it.
Another example of a paradox being challenged by motion: honeybees were always considered too large and heavy to fly. If you modeled an airplane with similar proportions, it would never take off. Yet the bee’s too-small wings and too-round body are perfectly designed to manipulate gravity around it for flight. As they flap their wings at ever changing angles, skillfully generating vortices of powerful frequency, bees lift and soar by their own aerodynamic rules. Instictive movement.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that while paradoxes and “shoulds” will always exist in our too-logical mind and survival-wired brain, it’s our physical bodies in this physical plane that gets us out of paralysis.
The possible (and the impossible) “coulds” only exist in exploration and embodied action. In this very moment. In experimentation, which as my friend Alex taught me, carries the etymological roots for “out of the mind.” A question turned into curiosity turned into forward steps into the unknown.
Sometimes, to march is to pray with our feet1.
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A year ago, I went into the Boston Public Library to write. Sitting under the vaulted ceilings of the Bates Room, I wrote about the summer of all summers. About no longer filling, but feeling, my way back to myself. About integrity meaning wholeness, wholeness meaning union, which is also the meaning of yoga, and embodying unspoken forgiveness by surrendering to pleasure, beauty, and ease.
About coming for – and claiming back – all of myself. I miss you, I love you was the full exhale after a liberating and life-giving summer. A long-overdue overflow.
A year later, I came back to the Boston Public Library.
I reflected about how this year, I decided to take a break from healing. Trading the endless podcasts, research, and inspirational quotes on how to live and be, to just living and being. Traveling to where I felt called to. Yielding to simple desires and unyielding gut feelings. Swerving, not always willingly, from what didn’t feel fully aligned. Letting mistakes sharpen my intution. Creating and writing. Starting over.
Though this wasn’t the same summer of all summers, it was a season that nourished my soul.
This was the summer I put my corporate job hat back on and framed my work station with postcards and artwork. Roadtripped with Vicky to Atlanta to celebrate her new chapter, and watched my first Red Sox game at Fenway Park with Jess. Climbed trees and picked blackberries with my nieces and nephew. Felt so honored to meet my brother’s close circle of friends. Jumped into a final August portal to soak in the warm light and air of the most idyllic villages along la Côte d’Azur.
Turns out I’m still really good at ordering croissant au beurre and baguette tradition, and requesting slices of comté and morbiller cheese. Beurre salé and gâteau au chocolat still melted perfectly in my mouth. I fell in love with Èzes, Menton, Cap Ferrat, and Cap d’Antibes.
I felt the SNCF announcements ring so familiar and bittersweet. I rinsed my soul (and mal de mer) in the Mediterranean sea. I got a “bravo” from the saleslady for keeping up our conversation, and free breadsticks “pour la route” from the cute boulanger. I said yes when a stranger invited me to a sunset picnic date. I cheered my last night in Nice with a friendly Canadian girl and a yogi wine bar owner, delighting in the signature rosé of le Sud: pale pink like the moon that rises from the sea at dusk.
Then I welcomed spring for the second time this year from my southern hemisphere hometown. Surrounded by flowering Brazilian ypê and jacaranda trees, I lingered in my favorite padarias and frutarias, Lebanese ice cream shop, orchid-wrapped trees, homecooked meals, and Formula 1 Sundays.
My best friend took me to the mountains of Serra da Mantiqueira, a weekend trip that fulfilled my longing for a fireplace and indigenous araucaria trees, satisfied wishes that felt so precious and far from simple. In Monte Verde, I learned that you can only smell the fragrance of lavenders when you rub them (gently), and that the best strudels have their dough pulled by hand until it’s a sheet as thin as tracing paper.
I turned 34, but let my neighbor believe that I am still in high school. In a way, I’m still the same student trying to make sense of Zeno’s paradox in Calculus class.
Anyway. To wrap up, here are some things that my Jesus year (being 33) taught me to be true:
If your fear and longing conflict, go with your longing.2
There are places we go to, and places we arrive at.
There are people we go to, and people we arrive at.
Some moments get to be milestones, others get to be memories. Cherish both of them.
As Brené Brown says, keep your shadow in front of you so you can see it.
Warm salad bowls are the best thing ever.
Savory, high-protein breakfasts won’t spike up your glucose level and will keep you energized throughout the morning – leftover dinner with eggs make a great breakfast!
It takes as much energy to slow down as to speed up: a lot.
Consistent mobility drills really do work! I got my first L-sit after months of practicing compression and strengthening my hip flexors.
Nature doesn’t rush, but it always gets things accomplished.
I can always create more space: between a stimulus and a reaction, between a person and a feeling, between a thought and another thought. The easiest (sometimes, only) way to do this is through my breath.
A lot of problems seem to get resolved on their own while I take a nap.
We can mature our passions into purpose.
Our brain is most interconnected and activated when we’re singing, playing an instrument, or learning something new.
Also, there are more nerves going from the heart to the brain, than from the brain to the heart.
My favorite compliments to date: “you have really good friends” (the best ones ❤️), something about the way my brain works, and “shiny eyes.”
Nothing keeps, but magic dust is like glitter – you keep finding it everywhere.
Make everything part of the dance.
I know what I like and love, but I don’t know all that I will like and love.
And my mantra all year: “I’m grateful for this moment.” Hit or miss, paired with a cheeky yogi smile.
If you’ve made it here, thank you for reading <3
All my infinite love, in finite actions and words,
Andrea
quote by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
words of wisdom by Martha Beck