The Arithmetic Of Adulthood: A Life Lesson Hidden in Elementary Math

While growing up, we learned that numbers can't subtract a number greater than them. The only solution to make it possible is borrowing, making the number lent to assume to be greater. Example: 15-9. To avoid a negative number, we'll assume to borrow an adjacent number, giving the 15 certain momentum. But as we advance into college, we realize it can actually have a negative value. It doesn't matter what's subtracting; there's always an answer, whether negative or positive, it all fits. Judging from these two scenarios, I learned a very special life lesson from it—one that speaks of life's vicissitudes and how we handle them in general.

As a child, we had people we could run to whenever the negative appeared. We could always borrow from those who oversaw our affairs. They took the shots that came our way, ensuring that the negative was dealt with before it started to take from us. This is why we didn't believe there's a negative number if a number subtracted one greater than itself—because the borrow factor was there. When life threw its tantrum, our parents took the hit and suffered the effect of the negative number until we thought life was easy and enjoyable on the other end.

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We longed to become adults, unaware of what lay ahead, but eventually it came, and the first realization we got was that our thoughts were faulty. There was always a negative, and it was part of the arithmetic. When we felt everything was a positive number, we realized that there were also negative numbers, and these numbers surface when we're drained beyond our capacity. This knowledge comes when we advance into college. Instead of borrowing, 15-9 becomes -4. Meaning you're owing, and you'll need 4 to come to a point where you're neither advancing nor owing.

These negatives come when life's vicissitudes begin to hit us. At this point, we are grown and no longer have the parents' shield that prevented the negatives; we start to see them ourselves. While zero once meant nothing, we'd prefer to stay at zero to owing and trying to fit. No matter what happens in life, staying at zero becomes more comfortable than staying at -10 because you'll have to first deal with the negative before coming to the point of advancing. Someone who's at zero is likely to advance and grow faster than someone who's at -3. The nursery arithmetic only shows us how simple our life was because we were still young with parents to take the hit, and the college arithmetic shows us the bitter truth of life—that when vicissitudes strike, we could suffer the negative number. But then in whatever we do, staying at zero comes with more honor than staying in the negative. No matter what happens, work your way out.