How to measure life.

A story about kilos.

AI-generated image. Prompt: God wearing a French beret and lifting a weight. It could be that this god is wearing a Fitbit and takes anticoagulation medication.

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This letter was inspired by

Remy Bazerque

and his struggles with numbers, which you can read about here. Remy has a writing style that, if it mirrors his outlook on life, makes me think he has shit figured out, because laughter, as you know, is the way forward.

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The kilogram was the last unit to be defined in terms of fundamental physical constants. Until the year 2019, the kilogram was a “thing” called the international prototype of the kilogram, an alloy of iridium and platinum that was carefully wrapped and hidden away in a secret chamber in the Paris underground. Concealed from the corrosive elements and the prying eyes.

Replicas were made and distributed so that other parts of the world would have their own kilo reference. But the replicas were just that, mere copies. Being the vainglorious snobs they are, the French knew they had the original kilogram and felt very smug about it. Side note: I am Spanish and therefore entitled to diss the French; it’s a Spanish law, go check it up.

It turns out that in one of the regular check-ups, they figured the kilo was losing weight. When I read about it, I imagined hoards of people in berets and white lab coats measuring temperatures, humidity, and conductivity and generally freaking out, shouting from time to time, “Ce n’est pas possible!” while pulling the hairs off their French moustaches.

Yes, when I read about it, my inner Spaniard smirked: “Ha! Your kilo is not so kilo-y anymore!”

I envisioned the possible consequences of this weighty catastrophe:

1. RyanAir hostesses being (even more) harassed by passengers whose luggage suddenly exceeds the weight allowance by 0.02g. “Sir, you need to pay the 50€ fee for the excessive weight of your luggage”. Seventy-six-year-old men having apoplectic fits in front of the check-in counters. “Sir, you need to step aside. Kindly have your stroke in the designated area”.

2. Economists at Kellogg’s calculating what would be more economical- to discretely scoop out a handful of cereal from every packet at the supermarkets (worldwide) or to “gently” increase the prices across the board.

3. Weigh Watchers being sued for misleading advertising. Massive protests in front of every WW meeting place with angry overweight radicals holding banners demanding their points back.

These potentially devastating consequences got me thinking about human nature.

You see, the measure of things, that is, applying a value to something, is completely arbitrary. The sole goal of measuring is being able to understand each other across languages. Math is universal but limited in some of its ways. Let me give you an example of humanness messing up what could be straightforward. Scientists have made excruciating efforts to make meters, seconds, degrees of temperature and calories exact measurements. The metric system makes sense; counting ten fingers is easy! But you will then walk certain surfaces of the Earth, and people will tell you about the miles they run, how many pounds they need to lose, and how it’s 32° Fahrenheit and really cold (insert shrugs shoulders emoji).

Half of the world seems intent on not talking the same language as the other half, clinging to the old way of doing things because it’s their way of doing things. It reminds me of white postmenopausal men who are afraid of facing their own insignificance. When I encounter one of those I feel compelled to say “Oh honey! it’s OK; you matter, maybe not so much as you thought you did or in the way you thought you did, but you still do, so relax. C’mon, don’t grovel, you’ll get your clothes dirty”.

But I digress.

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Humanity has been all about counting, weighing, and measuring since we started meandering the world, or at least since we started writing about our meandering in the world. After all these years of writing (at least 5000 years, mind you), we are still surprised and somewhat disappointed when we find out that our ancestors were no better than us at “the meaning of life.” Of course they were not! Had they been more enlightened, I would imagine they would have passed on some of their knowledge to us, right? How sad to discover that the oldest Sumerian texts are all about economic administration.

Numbers, numbers everywhere.

How far we have come; how little we have learnt.

Our obsession with measuring things has, in my opinion, a great impact on how we see the world. I struggle to understand how a tool made to facilitate everyday life (i.e. numbers) has become the axis around which life revolves. I find it worrisome, funny and intriguing (in different proportions on different days) how we do not realise that the measure we apply to things doesn’t change their intrinsic value. Not happy with this, we take it to the next level. We impose measurements on ourselves constantly.

How much is our life worth? Like it could be quantified.

Talk about hell…

Maybe that is why I love the idea of God. An external entity who sees us and doesn’t need scales to realise how priceless we all are. How unique.

I see God sitting in almighty eternity, baffled by his masterpiece. “What the fuck are they on about when they say how many “likes” constitutes virality?”

I envision him wondering where he went wrong with his parenting skills whilst cooking up the next plague:

And then God said: “Viral? I’ll show them viral.”

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This beautiful poem by Jack Gilbert, “The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart”, talks about the limits of communication since its inception way more beautifully than I could ever convey, so if you do one thing today, let it be reading that poem.

The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart (Jack Gilbert)

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind’s labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not language but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.

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