MARCH 15, 2020 – Yesterday, the earth turned, the sun shone, the stars came out . . . and abject fear and chaos ruled the news feed and the airwaves until they (the fear/chaos) didn’t, if you had the good sense to shut ’em down. In my own case, after my third call-out of a scary headline, my wife told me to read a happy story. I then did something I’d never done: I searched “cat videos” on YouTube, watched one . . . and laughed out loud!
I’m still sleeping normally, which, for me, means dreaming end-to-end crazy dreams. Last night the main feature entailed trying to decipher directions for a complicated computer program. It was pure gibberish; a mix of icons, numbers, and words without meaning. Two women dressed in lab coats were on hand to answer questions. I blew a gasket.
“You call these directions?” I said. “These are nonsense. They’re written in code that only you understand. Why bother at all? These are worse than no directions!”
I was steamed, and it didn’t help matters when one of the “experts” asked, “What specifically don’t you understand?”
This made matters worse. With random abandon, I struck the keys on my laptop. This elevated my frustration further, which made the women in lab coats more perplexed. That torqued me off even more. None of this advanced my ability to access the program.
I noticed, however, that despite their growing perplexity, the women remained confidently calm. A smidgeon of doubt entered my mind. Maybe I was the problem. Perhaps I was not apprehending a simple key to the code. I needed to calm down, chill out, take a deep breath, etc., etc.
On the other hand, having just made such a scene over what I thought were abysmally poor directions, I found it hard to switch gears. Instead, I decided to “compromise.” I offered a suggestion.
“Here’s an idea,” I said.
“We’re listening,” said one of the women.
“How ’bout you just drop language altogether and go strictly with illustrations? Like the ones you see on those cards aboard airplanes—the cards showing how to make an emergency evacuation?”
I woke up before I got an answer.
On second thought, I don’t think that was a wholly “normal” (crazy) dream. I think it was prompted by The Virus crisis and the uncertainty surrounding it. Our brains are searching for answers, solutions, understanding.
Looming behind our search is the inexorable power of exponential math. However much math you took in school, surely you remember one sharp example of its raw power. Start April with one penny and double your savings ever day. By tax day, you’d have $163.84. But by April 30, you’d have $5,368,709.12.
That’s great if you’re working with pennies. Not so good if you’re dealing with the transmission of a disease. This power of math is what every single American needs to understand. Immediately.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
