When Life doesn't add up, I turn to Math
Because sometimes, just sometimes, numbers make more sense than emotions.
Every morning, I take the same route to work. And almost every morning, I get stuck in traffic. Not the mildly annoying kind. I mean full-blown, existential-spiral-inducing traffic. The kind where even Google Maps gives up and switches from minutes to a vague “you’ll get there eventually.”
In those in-between moments when the city is on pause but my mind is racing I do something unexpected. I solve math problems. GMAT quant problems, to be precise.
Not because I’m in the middle of serious prep. Not because I’ve set a two hour study window. But because something about it soothes me.
Looking back, I think I’ve always done this. Even in school, when emotions felt too big or I couldn’t make sense of what I was feeling, I’d open my math textbook. Numbers were never warm or poetic. But they were steady. Predictable. They didn’t need me to be emotionally available. Just present, just focused.
But I never labelled it. I never told anyone. It was just something I did.
Although, I almost got there once. In a conversation with my therapist a few years back, she asked me what brought me calm. I told her, half-smiling, “Honestly? Solving math problems.” She had been giving me reflective journaling prompts and expressive drawing assignments, but none of those landed the way a neat little number puzzle did.
She paused for a moment and said, “That’s good. That’s your thing.”
And I remember thinking, Wait, this counts? This counts as self-soothing? It did. I just didn’t have the words for it then.
And now, sitting in a cab surrounded by a hundred honking cars and spiraling thoughts, I find myself doing the same thing. Without thinking. Like muscle memory.
We all have things we return to when we need grounding. Tiny acts of reclaiming control when life feels chaotic. For the longest time, I thought I didn’t have that.
I thought I was just winging it, doing whatever got me through the day. But then I noticed this pattern, this pull. Every time I felt stuck, I’d instinctively open a quant problem. Even if it was just for five minutes. Even if I got it wrong. Even if I never finished it.
It was the act of doing it that mattered. The focus. The quiet. The order.
That’s when I realised: This isn’t just a habit. It’s a ritual. One that has always been with me quietly, without needing a name.
In a world where so much feels ambiguous and unresolved, math always offers me a resolution. Not always easily. But eventually, if I sit with it long enough, it gives.
And that’s what makes it special. :)