He was a child prodigy, a mathematical genius and one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived. A frail reed, he died slowly, painfully, at 39. Today, when everyone walks around with a cellphone, he is chiefly remembered for this: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” That is, in a self-selected state of drastic under-stimulation.
The ego really wants to multiply. But all it can do is divide.
If you ask nine different people what man is, or what God is, or what anything is, you’ll get nine different answers. We use words thinking they will mean the same thing to others as they mean to us. But they don’t. They can’t. Everybody understands everything through the filter of his own experience.
Numbers are clear, but words are vague, foggy, obfuscating and contradictory. That’s why the heart doesn’t use them, and why lovers need silence.
My need was obvious but out of politeness he asked me anyway: “How may I help you?”
“There’s too much of me,” I said. “Teach me how to subtract.”
Men's Work 