Why Progress Has to be Invisible

There is a million dollar prize for anyone who can solve this problem. It's called the P. vs. NP problem. I've internalized it as the Politics or Not-Politics decision. Do we solve problems by talking about them, or not talking about them.

I've started to believe that for a certain scale and scope of problem, we don't solve them by talking about them. It's not because dialogue isn't important, it's because language has certain limits. Calculus is a branch of math based in the concept of limits. The million-dollar prize is for a math problem called the P. vs. NP. problem. If I was to talk about how the problem works, it would probably hit a limit of what I can communicate clearly, and then you would stop reading.

Progress has to be invisible, because our eyes can only see some things. Truth will always be only partial, because it lives in a language that we invent, and humans are not the universe.

Progress has to be invisible, because the empty space behind it draws out our creativity more deeply than a spreadsheet with linear growth could.

In other words; progress has to be invisible, because we are it. The creation of a better world is not me being able to confidently describe it. The creation of a better world is everyone being able to discover it.

It's something found underneath our skin.

Inside our hearts.

Rippling out in

Rhythms.

Cycles.

Circles.

Heartbeats--

Drawn together in a hug

Pushed away by a palm and

Shaped by the invisble trust that forms knowing

We own our space.

Life develops at the speed of boundaries. When I know me, I can start to know you. When I understand my space, I can start to respect yours. To be pro-life, is to be pro-boundary. If you don't respect the pressure of your own heartbeat pushing its ripples out into the world, then maybe you are tired, exhausted, paddling to catch and ride someone else's wave.

To remove choice, is to fight life. To fight the thing that invited you to breathe your first breath. It is to wish that you had never faced that struggle, never gasped and grasped, never wailed out miserably and never lived. Never lived as yourself, outside of another. Birth invites choice, as breath invites blood to pump new fire across your veins.

Progress has to be invisible, because it increases with our choice. There are many who live without the choice. Because their own choice to breathe lives beyond the edge of their bodies. I've been there. Always waiting for the next rush. Always living for the next crisis. Setting harder, and farther, impossible goals. Striving to prove that existence was meaningless unless I made it.

Unless I made that thing inside of me. I would not know what I am. The moment I did, or it passed, I would find myself knowing me less. All my effort leaving me; only a little more stretched out.

Progress is invisible because it happens inside. Inside of a brain consumed in darkness. Inside of a body protected by skin. Inside of community; veiled from the prying eyes of vulturous designs wanting to take it. To "make it." Trapped because they cannot find life within their own breast.

That's the essence of the million dollar "P. Vs. NP" problem. Can we find a way to solve which problems are solvable in polynomial time vs. non-polynomial time. For me it's a poem; can something be solved by politics or not by politics? If I knew, I'd probably be a million dollars richer.