Thoughts as Pi Day comes to an end

Today, my friends, is Pi Day and, because I love math and learning, I decided to make a way bigger deal out of it than justifiable.

My interest in pi was first sparked earlier this year when I read a literary journalism by Richard Peterson, "Mountains of Pi." The piece profiles two brothers and their all-encompassing obsession with the number. In its entirety, "Mountains of Pi" is one of the better things I have read but what really grabbed my attention was a passage that described that, if every letter of the alphabet corresponded with a sequence of numbers, your name and address and the lyrics to your favorite album would be spelled out in succession for an uncountable amount of times within pi. The lack of pattern that exists within pi creates an unpredictable spontaneity and, therefore, pi includes every combination of numbers possible multiple times in repetition. That, I think, is pretty sweet.

But, that spontaneity only becomes awe-striking when we take into account the fact that pi is endless. There are some people in my grade who know close to a hundred digits of pi. There are some mathematicians who have gone mad searching for the first ten million. I know seven. And still, on the grand scheme of pi, what the mathematicians know and what I know is relatively the same. Nothing. An end to pi does not exist and, therefor, where ever our knowledge of pi ceases, we must assume is practically nothing.

I think it is this endlessness that gets me the most. Like pi, life too is unpredictable. It is tangible that there is no pattern to the digits of pi because we never know what will happen tomorrow or the next day. Uncertainty is familiar.

But, unlike pi, everything we know comes to an end. I know it because, even when math class drags on, a bell will always cut my teacher off mid-sentence. I know it because my mom has marked and circled the date of my high school graduation on our family calendar. I know because tonight I listened to my favorite artist strum perfect cadences and bid farewell to a begging crowd. I know because I had to toss my favorite pair of shoes earlier and because my train pulled into the station and because I have watched a night become a morning with the tick of a clock.

And, more than anything, I know because today I looked into my friend's red and blurry eyes as she told me that our neighbor had passed. I know because two wonderful people, friends I grew up with, will live the rest of their lives without a father. I know because, if a heart as strong and as pure and as courageous as his could stop beating, than the same must be true of everything I know.

Except for pi. Pi mocks us with its inability to cease. While I sit here watching things I know and care about come to an end, pi is still going, adding digit after digit to a degree I cannot comprehend.

Worshiping pi has given me a false hope that, if this very small number (just a tad over 3), can go on forever, than other things can too. But I am wrong. Pi is some magic exception that taunts my mortality and the mortality of everything I know and am a part of.

Maybe this is why so many mathematicians sacrifice their sanity to dig further into pi: to know something infinite.