27 - The Love we seek
3.
3.
3 - 3 = 0
3 / 3 = 1
3 + 3 = 6
3 x 3 = 9
3^3 = 27
She is intelligent, courageous, and candid. I am patient, inquisitive, and thoughtful. We found each other and now are forever indebted.
3 - 3 = 0
He was the opposite of me; intolerant, incurious, and careless. Get along, we did not. Mr. Smith’s decision to allocate seating pairs after one class with a substitute teacher ruined my 5th grade. I had to sit with him for a year. It was hell. I did my fair share to antagonise him as he did to annoy me. Neither of us enjoyed that year. What an absolute waste.
3 / 3 = 1
They were exactly like me. Patient, inquisitive, and thoughtful but competitive. Everything I did, they also did and they were often better. I improved, I suppose, but at what cost? The team never finished above fourth place in the three years we were together. By the end of my high school debating career, I had little to show for it except a moderately decorated blazer pocket.
3 + 3 = 6
He was my closest friend through some difficult times; the move away from home, breaking up with her, working at the local fast food establishment. He was all the things you wanted in a friend, but ambitious he was not. He liked it around there. Familiarity was his north star, discomfort an agony he could not tolerate. He enjoyed my idealism, but I never got the sense he envied it. We were good for each other, complimentary, maybe perfectly so but that wouldn’t and didn’t last.
3 x 3 = 9
They helped me become the man I am now. The assignments we did together. The late-night group studying sessions, the pre-exam worry, and the post-exam relief. We did it together. They made me better. They enabled me to believe in myself. With them, I achieved more success than I knew possible. I was close to the top of my class, enjoyed a vibrant social life, and landed my dream job. As much as I received, I also gave. They cherished the notes I provided, my baking every second Tuesday, and the coffee recommendations I stole from the magazine I subscribed to. We did well together, the results tangible, valuable but fleeting.
3^3 = 27
She makes me the person I have always wanted to be. She makes me believe in me, her, us, love. The whole of us is greater than the sum of our parts. I feel guilty because I put in so little yet get so much. I feel indebted to her; a constant need to be kinder, more sacrificial, gentler, more understanding, more accommodating, and more vulnerable. How am I worthy of all that she is giving me; the ability to be free, compounding joy, creativity, wonder, courage? Then, I realised my experience mirrors hers. A mutual sense of indebtedness, the realisation that our actions result in a deep and compounding sense of fulfilment within each other. What we have is beautiful, constant, all-consuming, generous, tolerant, patient, disciplined, compassionate, caring, soothing, electrifying, triumphant, and enduring. It enhances moments of joy, blunts periods of despair, and breathes vibrancy into the long stretches of time in between. It is love. The love we seek.
Themes - love, mathematics, childhood
Your turn - Submit a 600 word piece of fiction based on one of these three themes and a selection will be placed on the blog. Happy writing.