My Obsession With Numbers

After eight years, tens of thousands of miles, hours upon hours of use and abuse in all kinds of weather, my CicloMaster died. It had tracked my miles, my speed, my time, and other statistics as I pedaled my bicycle around the state of Oregon.

It also fed my obsession with numbers. It was a steady fix, an injection of facts and figures shot directly into my brain. They measured more than how far I’d ridden my bike or how fast. In some sad, sick way, they measured who I am.

With society as my primary pusher, I’ve been addicted to numbers since childhood. Without them, I would not exist. Growing up, what would I have been without my grade point average? How could I have progressed lacking SAT or GRE scores? In sports I kept a close eye on my batting average in baseball and how much I could bench press in the weight room. Later, as I built a career, the best way to evaluate success was my salary’s number.

Happiness, satisfaction, meaning, or purpose seldom played a part in calculating my advance through life. How could they? What does happiness weigh? How fast is satisfaction? What’s the point total for meaning? Does purpose have an average score? Society never patted me on the head because I felt joy in my heart. But it sure gave me hearty backslaps for achieving some good numbers.

I wish I could say that the death of my CicloMaster has liberated me. Far from it. I immediately replaced it with a Garmin Edge 205, which spits out even more numbers about each ride I take and delivers more data about my overall biking history. It satisfied my numbers jones nicely.

Despite knowing the ephemeral, even meaningless nature of the numbers that summarize my life, I can’t help myself. I’m addicted. Without them I would not know who I am. Perhaps, as I said, I would even cease to exist.