There’s something beautifully rebellious about imaginary numbers. They live just beyond the grasp of our everyday understanding, yet they’re everywhere—in technology, physics, art, and even our thoughts. The symbol i, defined as the square root of -1, shouldn’t exist according to traditional arithmetic. But it does. And in its quiet defiance, it reveals something profound about how we understand the world—and ourselves.
This is the life of i. But it’s also, in a way, the life of you.
The Birth of the Impossible
For centuries, mathematics insisted that negative numbers couldn’t have square roots. The logic was airtight—multiplying two negative numbers always yields a positive one. So how could a number squared give a negative result?
Then came the need. Engineers, mathematicians, and scientists began stumbling into problems that required impossible answers. Solutions that worked—on paper, in concept—only if this strange number i was allowed to exist.
So it was created. Defined. Accepted. And the moment that happened, entire fields began to evolve.
Sometimes, the rules need to bend to accommodate what reality demands.
Between Real and Unreal
Imaginary numbers aren’t just math’s odd outcasts. They’re vital to how we model the world. From electrical engineering to quantum mechanics, from sound waves to digital imaging—i is woven into the fabric of modern life.
And yet, we never see it. We never measure it directly. We calculate it, infer it, rely on it. But it remains hidden.
In that way, it’s not unlike the parts of ourselves we don’t show. The abstract ideas we believe in. The emotions we can’t define. The dreams that feel too strange to speak aloud. These are our imaginary numbers—unreal in form, essential in function.
The Complex Plane
Pair a real number with an imaginary one and you get a complex number—a coordinate that exists in a two-dimensional space. The real and imaginary axes combine to form a plane that allows us to map, rotate, transform, and understand phenomena that were once unreachable.
It’s only when the real and imaginary work together that we get a fuller picture.
The same can be said for people. You are not just the measurable aspects—your job, your age, your address. You are also your hopes, your griefs, your contradictions. The part of you that dares to believe in things unseen. Like i, it’s the combination of the concrete and the abstract that makes you whole.
Embracing the Imaginary
We are taught early to trust only what can be proven. But life often runs on what can’t be. Love, intuition, possibility, faith—these aren’t always rational. But they guide us. Drive us. Define us. Just as the square root of -1 shouldn’t make sense, but does, so do many of our greatest decisions, instincts, and changes.
Maybe what imaginary numbers really teach us is that it’s okay to be beyond explanation. That mystery doesn’t weaken truth—it deepens it.
You, as i
So here you are: a mix of real and unreal. Tangible in body, infinite in thought. You live in a world that values logic, order, predictability—and yet, you survive by your instincts, dreams, and irrational desires just as often.
You are not wrong for being both. You are not broken for having parts that don’t fit into formulas. Just like i, your value isn’t diminished by being hard to define.
In fact, it may be the very thing that makes you essential.
This is the life of i. And it’s more familiar than you think.
