a basis for understanding

it is estimated that we blink twenty-four thousand and forty times a day. we take twenty-three thousand breaths, filter fifteen hundred liters of blood, produce 2 liters of acid, and our heart beats a hundred thousand times a day.
these numbers are there to make you understand the universe within your body in words that are comprehensible to your mind.
that's what numbers do. they make you understand.
but see, numbers are also the most misunderstood idea in the world. we think that someone created these axioms because they had a little too much free time. you never hear people say that about languages. that languages were created because people had a little too much free time. why? because language is a necessity. you cannot understand if you don't have the same basis for understanding.
there's a concept in linear algebra called basis. what you do is you take a matrix (which is really a whole bunch of equations with a whole bunch of variables except to make your life easier, you only write the numbers and not the variables and you solve for x. isn't that what everything in math is about?) anyways, what basis does is that it represents every single vector in a given vector space. so essentially, what you are doing is taking a complex system of possibly infinite variables and condensing it into one linear combination. you are taking something complex and simplifying it into an idea that is easier for your mind to understand. now admittedly, this is a very small part of linear algebra, let alone math. but it explains everything that math is.
math is essentially a language that provides a basis for you to understand the universe. because there are too many arbitrary ideas and concepts and half-truths and observations, math gives you a sort of "hey, this is an axiom (universally acknowledged truth) and these are variables required for it and this is how this axiom was derived and if you have even a part of this axiom, i can prolly help you discover the rest of it." doesn't that sound incredible? that you can take two pieces from a 500 piece puzzle and use those two pieces to figure out the rest of the puzzle.
this is why i love math so much.