Last update: Augusts 28, 2017
When my pupils ask me what a limit is in mathematics, I tell them that a limit is movement. A movement that sometimes ends in a precipice and at other times it never ends. In any case, limits and happiness can only be understood if we move into function and become a shadow of that same movement.
It can be a movement towards "having". Most parents sell their children the need to be the ant and despise the cicada (guilty, of course, of what happens at the end of the story). The future is unpredictable and we never know how many resources we may need if dark times come.
Initially children are unable to understand the complexity of this philosophy and see knowledge only as the means by which to pass exams and, therefore, to make their parents happy.
A knowledge that they will then see in another way (they will yearn) when they fall in love. When this time comes, they will want to know everything. They will be fascinated by the possibility of discovering how the little one looks in amazement at the person who shows and hides his face in the famous game of bubù-settete.
Then, the function will begin to approach its limit by distinctive will and will let us glimpse the asymptote it longs for, but will never reach. This is how love is transformed into the engine of this knowledge. A movement that is strengthened with the idealization that inevitably occurs at an early age (but also at a not early age).
One of the most frequent reasons is that which responds to the "need to have". The need we talked about earlier and that is transmitted to children through the echo produced by the message that bounces off society. A company that admits forward flight, the one that stimulates consumption as a perfectly valid solution to maintain stable or increase the quality of one's life.
