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Abundance

I’m writing this on my 72nd birthday. I think I’ve said so before, but I always like to check my birthday number in terms of the mathematical principles of abundant, deficient, perfect, and prime.

Prime numbers, as everyone knows, cannot be divided by anything else. Perfect numbers’ divisors add up exactly to the number itself, and that is very cool. Deficient numbers are those whose factors (divisors) add up to less than the number itself, whereas abundant numbers’ factors add up to more than the number itself.

Well, 72 is incredibly abundant. Yeehah!! I take this as a sign that my 72nd year will be filled with abundance. And I am here to say that it has already begun.

Last night I went on a night bike ride sponsored by our Parks & Rec Department, called Kaleidospoke. It’s all about lights and color (much like the Lantern Festival in Taiwan). I went with three wonderful friends who had gifted me with my ticket to the event, including a “glow package” and s’mores by the lake. The ride is on a gravel trail with many bridges over the creek. The bridges are all lit up and there are lots of other lights poking out of the ground or otherwise lining the trail. Magical!

And then of course, starting out at 7:00 p.m., in the gathering light, sunset is happening over the lake. Ahh. So lovely. We, ourselves, were lit up, as were our bikes. We had things stuck on top of our helmets or dangling off of us. Lots of people had lit up their bike wheels. It was super fun, but especially so because of the company I was in. Already I’m feeling the abundance.

I won twice in a row at Mah Jongg on Friday, too! And on Wednesday when I returned, after years away to play pickleball at the gym, I won game after game. Strangers were happy to meet me. I learned the names of 15 new people! One (Chuck) said, “Come back. We want you here.” I told my son, “I’m Somebody there!” Abundance.

So the abundance is all happening.

Just to say, whenever I hit a year whose number is deficient, I ignore that, and I think you should, too. But the other three–woohoo!! And since it’s my birthday and I’m having a party, I’ll have to keep this one short.

I hope your year forward is also ABUNDANT!

“Keep your best wishes close to your heart and watch what happens”― Tony DeLiso, Legacy: The Power Within

“Plant seeds of happiness, hope, success, and love; it will all come back to you in abundance. This is the law of nature.” ― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You

“The truth is that there’s more than enough good to go around. There are more than enough creative ideas. There is more than enough power. There is more than enough love. There’s more than enough joy. All of this begins to come through a mind that is aware of its own infinite nature. There is enough for everyone. If you believe it, if you can see it, if you act from it, it will show up for you. That’s the truth.” ― Michael Beckwith

If you’re looking for my cards or art, you’ll find all of that on my website. If you enjoy these letters, feel free to forward this one to anyone you think might like it. And if someone forwarded this one to you, you can sign up here to receive the letters right in your Inbox. Finally, you’ll find past letters and poems here.

Thanks for listening,
Kay

P.S. MerryThoughts is the name of my first book, out of print at the moment. The word is a British one, referring both to a wishbone and to the ritual of breaking the wishbone with the intention of either having a wish granted or being the one who marries first, thus the “merry thoughts.”

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Numbers

Recollections scrapbook paper

Whenever I have a birthday or when family and friends have birthdays, I like to figure out what kind of number the new age will be. Is it a perfect number, abundant, deficient, perfect square, or prime? I learned of this from a math professor. She commented that her mother was depressed about turning 64, but she had pointed out what a great number 64 is! My ears perked up. There’s the Beatles song, “When I’m 64,” very fun, of course. “Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64?” But that was my only thought at the time.

She elaborated on the fact that although 64 is a deficient number, it is a perfect square (8 x 8). Thus, as she had told her mother, it was a very cool number and could portend wonderful things. I suppose I probably had learned such things about numbers from high school math, or at least college algebra. Or maybe we didn’t learn fun things about numbers in those classes. In fact, I’m pretty sure we didn’t. Anyway, I was excited to learn about this later in life, particularly with respect to birthdays (which I love) and age (which I don’t mind).

An abundant number is one whose distinct factors add up to more than the number itself. Seventy (my current age) has the distinct factors of 1, 2, 5, 7, 10, 14, and 35 (you don’t count the number 70 itself). Add these up and you get 74. Thus, 70 is an abundant number. Yay! Anyone can readily see that this means 70 will be an abundant year.

A prime number cannot be divided by anything. Thus, it also is very exciting and probably magical. You will have a prime year when you are, for example, 59 or 19. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, “prime” refers to spring; youth; the most active, thriving, or satisfying stage or period; the best or chief part; original; not derived from anything else. Wonderful! Certainly we all want to have prime years, and certainly we all will. Oliver Sacks tells, in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, of twin autistic savants who took great satisfaction from going through the files of prime numbers in their brains and discovering new ones, as well.

Then there are perfect numbers. Their distinct factors equal the number itself. Six, for example, is the sum of its factors–1, 2 and 3. There are only four of those–6, 28, 496 and 8128. Sadly, if you’re past 28, you won’t have a perfect age ever again. But think back fondly to 28. We can tell ourselves that it was just about perfect.

A deficient number, such as 32, has distinct factors that add up to less than the number itself. The factors of 32 are 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16. This only adds up to 31. Poopoo. Whenever I do have a birthday and age with a deficient number that is not a prime or a perfect square, I just figure, who cares about this crazy idea? This is so childish. It’s ridiculous! It can’t possibly mean anything.

And then I just wait for the next birthday.

“It’s like asking why is Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony beautiful. If you don’t see why, someone can’t tell you. I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren’t beautiful, nothing is.” ― Paul Erdos

“What music is to the heart, mathematics is to the mind.” – Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

If you’re looking for my cards or art, you’ll find all of that on my website. And if you enjoy these letters, feel free to forward this one to anyone you think might like it. Finally, you’ll find past letters and poems here.

Thanks for listening,
Kay

P.S. MerryThoughts is the name of my first book, out of print at the moment. The word is a British one, referring both to a wishbone and to the ritual of breaking the wishbone with the intention of either having a wish granted or being the one who marries first, thus the “merry thoughts.”

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Twenty Twelve

A year ends another begins
and I am reluctant a bit sad
to see this one go loving odd
numbers as I do and in addition
eleven seeming a magical number
a prime and hinting at infinity.
Twelve, a dozen, I suppose has
merit insofar as being sturdy
ordered common a dozen of 
these two dozen of those please
half a dozen of that will do
six of one half a dozen of the other
the clock strikes twelve
noon twelve midnight

twelve apostles twelve months
in a year both this one and the next
oh I’ll learn to love it for itself
Im sure, its reliable balanced
sturdy well-ordered protean self.