Move 37

I think thirty-seven is three sets of ten… and one set of seven.

I think thirty-seven is written with the number three… and the number seven.

Why is a number not a letter? Or are letters and numbers just strings in computer programs, symbols in the real world?

…I like symbol.

What does the symbol thirty-seven symbolize… to me?

I saw it on the news, back in 2016. Machine learning making progress, an unusual thirty-seventh move played by Google’s AI in the game of Go… in the name of Go.

Thirty-seven itself is unusual for a Jesus follower like me: the twelfth prime number, written with prime number three… and seven.

Three — a set of three ones. Seven — a set of seven ones. One is unity. The other… perfection.

Oh, symbol, or is it my brain creating strange patterns where there are none?

An empty set. A set… of nothing.

Is zero… nil? Emptiness? Null? The absence… of everything?

Can nothing be nothing… out of nothing? Is nothing the same as the absence of everything? Does nothing exist… when nothing exists?

In an empty set, we see only what’s missing, but that doesn’t prove it isn’t there.

Some sets… are not numbers at all.

Like the things we love but cannot count: love, joy, patience, peace, gentleness, self-control… and faithfulness.

All in one fruit. A set of one.

Notice what is not in that set: hate… greed… selfish pleasure, you know the kind.

And so I return to thirty-seven: the twelfth prime among primes, three tens and a seven in a set — the hand of my God in my life, the completeness and perfection of His plan for me.

If The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy says the answer to everything is forty-two, then the answer to my everything is encoded in the number thirty-seven… in the hand that gave meaning to everything.

But what are prime numbers, anyway? Why aren’t all natural numbers prime… and all prime numbers natural?

We’d have number one as the super number, the prime as natural number, and everything else… the ridiculous number.

And zero? What about zero?

…I have no proof it exists. Yet here I am — existing to write this, created by a Creator.

Which brings me to the question: What about the simulation?

If you can think you might be in a simulation… is it still a simulation? Would you even have such a thought… if it were?

Do cats wonder if they are in a simulation?

This is why I never say I know nothing… or I know everything — for I am not God, nor a non-thinking being.

…I know partly.

And in that part lives the meaning of thirty-seven, three tens, one seven, unity and perfection, the hand of my God guiding my life in moves I cannot yet see.