Numbers Are Good- For Math
I’ve been thinking about how we use numbers to evaluate people a lot. And it’s not a good thing.
Numbers for scores on tests. Numbers for height. Numbers on a scale. Numbers for age. And there’s always a “good” number and a “bad” number, right? As if these numbers somehow mean something about our worthiness as human beings. My God/dess, there’s a literal rating system for someone’s attractiveness! “(S)he’s a ten”.
The number that REALLY got me thinking about all this is the: “What’s your number?” question. I don’t mean me personally. I just mean in general. How/why is this an acceptable thing for us to ask each other, and what are we really attempting to do when we ask it?
Seriously. What is the point of that? You want to see if I’m more experienced than you? You want to see if you’re more experienced than me? And why does that matter? If it’s because you want to see if I’m good in bed, won’t you find that out when we have sex? Maybe someone is fantastic in bed and they’ve only had one partner. Maybe they’re terrible in bed and they’ve had 200 partners. Who’s to say? So there goes THAT excuse for asking. 😉
Oh, I know. You want to see how slutty I’ve been so you can evaluate your risk factor for STIs, right? Nope. That doesn’t work either. Sure, if I’ve been having unprotected sex since the last time I got tested, and it’s with someone who is a high-risk partner who also has unprotected sex with someone else…you get where I’m going with that. But that has nothing to do with my “number”. Truth is, it doesn’t matter how many partners I’ve had. If I’ve been tested recently and haven’t engaged in any high risk behaviors, and don’t have any STIs, doesn’t that mean it’s “safer sex”?
And then of course there’s the whole double standard thing when it comes to numbers. If a man has a high number, that’s usually seen as “good”. It probably means he’s a real stud, yes? If a woman has a high number, that’s usually seen as “bad”. It probably means she has no moral character. Wait- what?! If you want to evaluate my moral character, hang out with me a bit. You’ll find out a lot about it, over time. That’s the only real way for any of us to find out what we like, what we want, what turns us on, what turns us off, who is trustworthy, who isn’t-with a partner or prospective partner.
So…Here’s my new paradigm idea. What if we did away with the numbers? What if we let go of all the preconceived notions of each other. What if we stopped trying to judge a book by its cover? What if we let each new experience with another human being speak for itself? What if we let go of all the things we heard about this person or that person before we met them? What if we lived, as much as we are humanly capable, IN the moment with whomever we are spending time with, whether it be a friend, acquaintance, or lover? What if we stopped relying on numbers to determine how valuable we and others are as human beings?
Then, maybe, we could own the expanding beings of love that we really are. And then we could be in our full essence. We could be our expansive, loving selves. What I know about THAT kind of experience is this: When I am being in my essence, and you are being in your essence, we are both being in our true magnificence. And THEN there’s some math I can get into, when love begets more love, when 1 + 1 = 7. ♥