Numb is Trapped in Numbers

By Li Yin ‘26

After a good cry from a scolding for being 2% away from 100%, for being one away from a five, I hold that gutting pain in my chest. It is at first blunt and piercing, but it slowly fades, and I let out a laugh. Every pore of my body, clogged by generational trauma, tightens. But laughter, and the boldness and unavoidance of its accompanying breaths, time and time again becomes another breath, becomes another step into clarity.

This time I laugh, because I find that as “laughter” is trapped in “slaughter,” “numb” is trapped in “numbers.”

***

Numbers, symbols with miniature right angles and smooth curves, would have no meaning otherwise, reflect only what we decide to impose. We pressure performance, value production, and expect perfection. We’re only worthy if we have this number of likes, this percentage of viewer engagement, this amount of reposts; we’re smart if we get a 36, a 1500, a first place; we’re only beautiful if we’re a 10… We fall into place, fall into quantities, fall into capitalism’s ways and wishes. It’s so cruel, what we decide to do for no reason.

I catch myself falling, too.

I refuse to read books rated below four out of five stars on Goodreads. It’s crazy to me, how I say that I am my own person, I make my own decisions. And then there are the ratings, the keyboards clattering, the thumbs ups and thumbs downs, the Yelps, the Rotten Tomatoes. Books nourish our minds, and food nourishes our bodies, yet we choose our nourishments based on how others fed themselves. Is there autonomy at all when we assign a number, a critique, to everything we know?

***

Perhaps if physics has a study of thought and language, it would tell us that thought and language are the most miraculous translation from matter to matter, medium to medium. Language literally turns the little sparkles made by your neurons, the complex, intangible, abstract, invisible beauty produced by your brain into something tangible—writing, word, hand motions. And this is passed onto another, becoming the little sparkles in another’s brain. The trend of our contemporary world, therefore, morphs from reality into the numerical values in our language.

So to undo it, we start by speaking differently. Don’t work your score on the SATs, your salary, your school ranking into every conversation. Imperfection is okay, unrated matters are equally worth exploring. Don’t let the “numb” in “numbers” paralyze your expansive potential for change.

Li Yin ‘26 (ly104) has found some hidden gems after ignoring Yelp ratings and the stars on GoodReads. From the October 2022 issue.