Finding x.
Ep: 05
I stared at the question as though sheer focus might conjure the answer onto the blank page. “So? Did you find x?” asked my senior.
“Whose ex?” I shot back, distractedly.
“Hah! This x, dummy,” he said, pointing to the equation on my lap.
“Oh… nope. Guess you’re right—I need to be in your class to solve these things.” I scrambled to grab my stuff and bolted to the field, embarrassment nipping at my heels.
That equation—its exact details now lost in memory—haunted my fifth-grade, overachieving brain. I couldn’t solve it, and it felt like a personal affront. Five characters: Find x. Why did such a simple instruction irritate me so deeply?
From then on, whenever I saw something missing, my mind would echo, "Find x," as if it were my personal incantation for restoring order or uncovering truth.
The reason behind a mysterious scratch on my knee?
Find x: x= rough ground
The secret to gooey brownies?
Find x: x= chocolate chips
The invisible thread that turns strangers into friends?
Find x: x= shared laughter
“Found it!”
As I grew, the phrase became more than a math problem; it became a lens, a silent mantra. To mathematicians, x is a placeholder for the unknown, the key to unraveling equations. But when I thought more deeply, it seemed life itself mirrored math—every movement of planets, every flutter of a butterfly’s wing, each shaping the intricate patterns of existence.
Then, what is the x of life?
From Einstein’s space-time continuum to the chaotic beauty of the multiverse, we’re surrounded by puzzles. The universe doesn’t just exist—it moves, expands, aligns, and disrupts with the precision of equations we’re still trying to understand. A slight shift in gravity could unmake the balance we take for granted. The sun lights the moon; a butterfly’s wings may summon storms. Everything is connected, infinite yet bounded, its truths encoded in mathematics.
Yet, we continue to search. Who created this? How did it start? Why? We’ve journeyed into space, crafted spectacular machines, written libraries of books—all chasing the same elusive answers. While we ponder the vastness of the cosmos, we face battles here at home: wars, hunger, inequity, and prejudice. All the elements of existence, born of the same soil, air, and water, but divided by our own hands.
What if the purpose of life isn’t what we’ve been taught? What if, to truly find x, we must unlearn, begin anew, and paint meaning onto a blank canvas?
We can think of it in this way : imagine we take the vast universe inside a spherical ball-like capsule-–almost like a miniscule snow globe–and think of it as something that’s inside a person. By “something” I mean one of the thousands of atoms vibrating in every being’s body, our universe being just one of them. Zooming into human ashes under a microscope, the patterns mimic the galaxies. Galaxies within galaxies, spheres within spheres, the configuration of a galaxy mimicking one of an atom. The rising and setting sun, traced across a year, sketches an infinity loop, like a rubber band crossed, but if uncrossed–makes a circle. A cycle. What if we are beings dwelling in this universe, which as a whole, is dwelling inside another being with millions of other universes (also explaining the theory of multiverse), and it keeps on going like a loop?
What if the answer to “where do we go when we die?” is that we don’t “go” anywhere? What if life is a loop, throwing us back into another parallel universe, like a film spliced and rewound, continuing in a way we’ll never remember? Perhaps every near-death moment is a doorway to a new branch of existence, a silent shift to another thread of the multiverse.
Perhaps we exist in an infinite cycle, a spiraling cycle where we are both the creators, the created, and sometimes, the destructors. Each of us a universe within a universe, vibrating with potential.
Life is infinite, even if our consciousness is not. We carry the echoes of something boundless. And while we’re here, in this brief coffee break of existence, we ask questions without knowing if there’s an answer. What if the real question isn’t "where do we go" or “why are we here” but "what can we do"?
In this fleeting moment of life, we’ve created realities, shaped worlds, and touched divinity in our creativity. What if God—the creator of it all— is not separate from us, but a part of us and the infinite cycle we embody? Perhaps finding x is less about searching for something external and more about realizing that the answer isn’t out there. Maybe it’s here. In us.
What if the x of life—the thing we search for so desperately—has always been within us? Love, kindness, meaning. You. Me. Us.
Perhaps the “Find x” in the equation of life,
x = Us.
What do you think the “x” of Life is? Share your thoughts!