THE WEIRDNESS AND WONDER OF INFINITY ON BOTH SIDES OF THE TOWN

Do you ever think about how infinity can’t be defined, but it can still be considered equal to itself? No?

I did today, when my friend Gareth said that God loves one side of the town exactly the same amount as he does the other.

Algebra, innit. We don’t know what X is but whatever it is (as long as it’s a constant anyway) we know it’s always X = X, or X - X = 0, whether you can count up to it, or not.  I think they call it a sort of ‘identity equation’.

Seems obvious. No wonder hardly anyone thinks about it. But a constant X is at least a sort of real-world value; infinity isn’t - it’s a weird and wonderful concept that fills out the universe, swirling and spinning for ever and for a day. It seems so strange to me that it’s ‘the biggest number you can think of plus one,’ while also being ‘the biggest number I can think of plus one’, and also being ‘the biggest number an infinite number of people can think of plus one’ - and yet if you divide any of those by any of the other, you still get exactly 1, every time.

If that plays with your head, don’t worry. It’s the weirdness and the wonder at work in our little two-dimensional way of trying to think about it. The ‘biggest number you can think of plus one’ is a process really, rather than a number. And I’m playing with words a bit to make a point.

Still with me? Well, anyway, it’s a mathematical construct. Love isn’t though: that is an X style constant. It’s difficult to measure, sure, but it does at least interact with our world.

And whether you perceive it or not, whether you live in the East, where years ago the industrial smoke drifted over the rooftops and the workers’ houses were smaller, or in the West, where the skies are clear and the houses airy, but people forgot how to say hello to each other, there’s still the infinite possibility that all of us might be loved, the exact same amount.