<p>Rationalizing the Sky</p>
<p>A curve is a naturally occurring phenomenon. A tulips pellet, a perceptive eyes cornea, and a panoramic horizon are all examples of such mundane curves. Yet, many scientists and other professionals analyze how a flowers pellet develop, how the curve of our cornea influences our vision, and how the horizon curve would look like to us if we are standing on X elevation (such professionals include movie directors who seek that perfect view.) From a young age, we are taught to think scientifically and rationally. We are taught that there is only one correct answer; one plus one could only be two. In life, it pays to think rationally, but rationality is only the half of it. We need to understand that.</p>
<p>In calculus class, we are taught that a curve represents changes in an imperfect world. I imagine then, in a perfectly predicable world, everything will be equal. Y is always equal to X, creating a straight line with the slope of one, a perfectly idle number. The line is infinitely continuous and infinitely boring and easy to understand. If I were so bored by this fictional world that I decided to jump off a roof, it wouldnt matter if it is five feet or five thousands feet off the ground; the speed at which I fall will be constant (zero acceleration.) But the world is not perfectly simple in the way I have imagined. The time I spent falling will determine how fast I was falling. I have learned many things in calculus to help me grasp the one true reality. For example, I learned that businesses and scientists use precise equations to calculate the precise amount of goods to produce in order to maximize profit and the amount of fuel needed for the rocket in order for it to go into orbit. The world is complex.</p>
<p>When I was still a child, I thought I knew everything without knowing anything. My ignorance was my shield against confusion. I was perfectly content, as a child should be. But as I grew progressively more rational and educated, I found myself getting less and less secure about my understanding of the universe and more and more confused about everything.
In school, unfortunately, we are taught to accept things as they are. A teacher is expected to teach the subject of geometry in one year, the subject that thousands of mathematicians throughout thousands of years have devoted their lives to. We are given a theory or an equation and we are taught to just accept it without understanding the reasoning behind it. Trigonometry was taught in three days; to understand it is impossible with the time given. If you stall in class, beating your brain for a rationale on a theory given three days ago, your grades will be in big trouble. On the contrary, we are rewarded with high grades for our ignorance. The vicious cycle is that we are given a theory to accept and before we understand it, we are given another theory that builds on the last theory that we never understood in the first place, creating a mountain of unanalyzed data. I knew so many college graduates who couldnt apply what they learned to real life. If I did not have the ability to slip into my dream world so often (also know as being lazy and ignorant,) I am sure I would go insane trying to understand everything.</p>
<p>As I was walking home one drizzling day after school, I was trying to truly understand and rationalize the derivative of logs (a calculus problem.) I asked my teacher in school and she told me that at our level, we should just accept it. I had a perfect score on the calculus test covering that subject and yet, I was the most confused person in the class. My mind drifted away to entertain some abstract notion of general connectivity; my theory that there is one equation to accommodate the whole university (I found out only now that such an idea is already published.) Again, my attention drifted to the ripples in the puddles on the ground. I was trying to count the ripples made by the rain but there were too many of them. Why couldnt I capture all the ripples in a mental picture, close my eyes, and count them all? I became angrily frustrated at myself because I didnt have an exact number. But I knew there were a lot of ripples.</p>
<p>I looked up just when I thought I was losing my mind and there was the sky, an infinite plain. I, like most people, am too concerned about finding the one truth, the one reality. But in the sky, to me at least, there lies an alternative answer. There lies subjectiveness, the often underutilized power of discretion. To me, the sky represents hope because of its unexplored vastness; but the sky itself is not hope. The sky is beautiful; but it is not more correct than things that are ugly. The sky is dominating; but it is not wrong. The sky is not a yes or a no, it is a subjective adjective. The sky is literatures and arts; it is satisfying to me and I didnt care if I could rationalize my satisfaction.</p>
<p>The fact is that we dont live in a perfectly simple world. We use an equation to find the velocity of a rocket so it can successfully go into space. The universe is vast and complex and the laws of nature are not handed to us. We must, therefore, attempt to capture the single reality with equations and theories. But we must learn not to ignore our power to be subjective. There might only be one true answer, but we can attach any adjective to it.</p>