Life’s full of operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Variables are found in this equation that are constantly changing. Sometimes they’re changed with a correct element which gets me closer to my answer, but other times, they’re replaced with an incorrect element which ruins the operation.
I believe that life is an ongoing equation leading to happiness.
A few years ago, my grandmother was taken away from my family forever. This subtraction lead to a whole list of incorrect variables. The sorrow multiplied, leaving us unable to concentrate on anything but how we could’ve saved her; even though there was no possible way. Our family divided because my grandma was the one who brought us together; she was the leading coefficient of our family.
My aunt removed herself from the equation almost entirely. She made me feel like I didn’t add up, like I wasn’t good enough to talk to her. My entire family didn’t interact as much as we used to.The order of operations seemed to be lost.
The addition of my grandfather’s illness was the worst part because it took me farther from happiness than I ever was. Because of the division and tension between my family, there wasn’t anyone to take care of him. My grandfather has Parkinsons disease, so he needs the addition of a caretaker with him at all times. Few of my family members were willing to be his caretaker, except for some, but they had a lot of responsibilities in their own life. They couldn’t help him full time. Arguments added to the equation because of this. We eventually had no choice but to put him in a nursing home. The multiplication of nursing home bills didn’t help our equation either.

I realized my equation wasn’t adding up, and I kept wondering if it ever would. After a while of looking over “my work,” I finally discovered that I needed to change the equation myself; not wait for the right variable to just come and fix everything. From that point on, everything started falling into place.
I added music into my life. I pick up my violin and enter my own world. I express myself in the notes I play, and I sometimes make up my own pieces that capture my feelings at that moment. Additionaly, I started multiplying my focus on academics which somehow had a huge positive effect on my equation. The feeling I get when my hard work pays off is amazing. My equation is now balancing; the positives are cancelling out the negatives.
Math has always come easy to me, so associating my life with a math equation made me understand it more than I ever thought I would. In math class when you do an equation wrong, you have to go back and find out what you did wrong. You then correct your mistake, and the equation runs smoothly again. By using that method in your own equation of life, anyone can figure out how be happy.