It is Just a Number
Who's Counting, Anyway?
I was thinking about numbers.
And, why?
Why does JoJo run an extra 300 metres to round up her Strava distance?
Why do we celebrate 1000, or 500 … why not 900, or 349?
That’s what I was wondering.
We have a non-Substack newsletter, which has been emerging every Sunday, 6 pm sharp for quite some time … this is the introduction to this week’s edition.
Edition No 349
“It is not in numbers, but in unity, that our great strength lies”
(Thomas Paine)
It's funny when you think about it. What numbers do we choose to celebrate? What makes those particular numbers more important than the others? What is it with numbers and milestones and celebrations anyway? We thought we'd say something next week when we reach Edition No 350. That sounds like a 'milestone kind of a number' doesn't it? But why that one and not '349'. Three hundred and forty-nine ... 349 ... trois cent quarante neuf. It is still a pretty cool number, after all. But, hey, did I mention that two weeks ago, we issued Edition No 347? I don't know how it slipped my mind because it was a number too.
So, what are you blethering about Mr Fables? Nope, I'm not sure either. Anyhow, this week it is 349 and it got us thinking what a crazy, madcap, unbelievable, astounding, wonderful, pinch-us-we-must-be-dreaming thing it is that you - all of YOU - are kindly opening the 349th edition of this weekly curation. Quite clearly, it would not be a thing without you.
Maybe there'll be another 349. Maybe more. What's in a number? But we just wanted to say "thank you" for being there.
In man, the things which are not measurable are more important than those which are measurable.
Alexis Carrel (Nobel Prize winning surgeon and biologist)
We humans do like to measure everything don't we? And yet, it is the small things that matter, that can't be measured. I suppose, what the numbers can sometimes reveal is that we've shown up. So, you've shown up 349 times with your newsletter, and that is something worth celebrating 🌟
I think we/humans have concluded that numbers/metrics are more real for being measurable, and that anything immeasurable doesn’t have value. If that is not crazy, I don’t know what is.