Forty one
A word on the number that chose me
∅. Candles
This is not perfect, dear reader, but I hope you like it.
I. Lines
My friend’s birthday was last week. She turned forty one.
Every birthday is significant, in one way or another, and it always ought to be a day to celebrate. But for her it was a difficult day (for reasons unrelated to the calendar), and it arrived on the heels of a difficult year, so I have been thinking about it a lot in the days since.
It seems to me that life becomes simpler as we get older, but (paradoxically) it does not seem to become easier as we get older.
Compounding that, of course, is the obvious fact that most women hate getting older. They hate what age does to their face and form, and they battle time, tooth and nail.
I told my friend that in my eyes she is more beautiful now than ever before, and that she grows more beautiful with every year that passes. I said it sincerely, and not to win her favour or inflate her ego. I said it because it is true. She thanked me for the kindness, but I don’t know if she believed me.
Women should not hate growing older.
The lines on a woman’s face are beautiful. They are like the threads in a grand narrative; every line is a story. They tell tales of joy and sorrow, bliss and boredom, love and loss, fun and fury… The marks are well-earned and ought to be worn with all the same grace and dignity and pride that one might wear with any other mark of honour and distinction.
And the lines on a woman’s face mark so much more than the passage of time. They have meaning: she has felt all things, and she has lived fully through the feeling of them. Lines express movement: toward laughter, toward tears, toward all that she loves. A face with no movement is a face without life. Without love.
And as I have said before: straight lines don’t occur in nature. Perfectly smooth and symmetrical surfaces are — almost by definition — alien and unnatural.
A tree grows outward in rings. It grows downward and upward in sprawling roots and limbs. It grows with no perfect symmetry and with no perfect turn in space or time. And yet, an old tree is a spectacular creature. Its beauty and majesty is enhanced (never diminished) with every year that passes.
I suppose no woman wants to be compared to an old tree… but I think old trees are fabulous and filled with magic, and analogies always break apart at some point.
I suppose, I could wax poetic on the virtues of aging with a bottle of fine wine or an exotic cask of whisky… but a woman might not feel any better about being compared to wine or whisky.
(And I’m afraid I can’t help that, dear reader. I am the writer of the words here, and you are the reader of them, so you can only suffer my metaphors. Just know that these are things that I love, and the plain truth is this: all the things that I love, I love all the more as they age.)
But I digress.
It was my friend’s birthday, and she turned forty one, and it was a difficult day on the tail end of a difficult year, and since that day I have been thinking of things I might say to shine a little light into her world, and perhaps bring a small smile to her lips.
II. Numbers
While walking my dog this afternoon, the strangest thing occurred to me. I thought about the number itself. Nothing to do with the circumstances in her life; nothing to do with the circumstances in my own; nothing to do with birthdays at all. Only the number. Forty one.
Forty one is my favourite number.
I have not told her this. I have never told anyone this. If I told her, she might not believe me. She might think I made it up to cheer her up.
But it’s perfectly true, and I did not make it up.
Forty one is my favourite number. (Yes, dear reader, the number 41.)
I don’t know if anyone else has a favourite number. People talk about lucky and unlucky numbers. One and two and three and seven and thirteen.
I am not a numerologist, to be clear. And if intelligence was measured by math skills alone, then I’d still be riding the short bus to kindergarten every day.
Friends and family are always happy to have me join a game at the kitchen table if the game involves numbers, because it vastly improves their odds of winning. Dominoes, cribbage, backgammon, most card games… I love to play (honestly), but it’s only for the play and never (ever) for the win.
If you call me and leave a voicemail with your telephone number, I’ll replay your message at least twice (and sometimes three times (and no, I am not exaggerating)) before I’m able to catch all the digits.
Numbers are not my thing.
So it should not surprise you that in all these years, I have never (not once) wondered why the number forty one is my favourite. It has been my favourite number for as long as I can remember, and I don’t recall when (or even if) I chose it. Maybe it chose me?
I thought maybe I’d tell my friend that I believe forty one is a great number. The best number. My favourite number.
Then I thought it might be nice to mention a bit of trivia that features the number. Something fun. Something interesting. Something someone might not guess.
And so — for the first time in my life — I looked it up.
I was awestruck by what I learned.
III. Primes
In numerology, every number carries a meaning. Forty one reduces to five, as four plus one. Five is the number of freedom. It is the number of life, because it counts the five senses. And the arithmetic matters: four is square and structure and patience and hard work. Four is the number of foundation. One is the number of beginning. The number of independence. The number of a fresh start.
Four plus one is a new beginning on a firm foundation.
And it gets better.
In the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah, the Hebrew word “em” means “mother”, and it has a numerical value of exactly forty one. This links the number to nurturing, and to origin, and to the feminine divine.
(I swear to all the gods, I am not making up any of this.)
But there’s more.
Forty one is a prime number. A prime is a number that cannot be divided. It cannot be broken into smaller parts. It is, by its nature, whole. Indivisible. Stubbornly, irreducibly itself.
In the 18th century, one of the greatest mathematicians who ever lived — a man named Leonhard Euler — discovered something remarkable about this particular prime. He found a formula that uses forty one as its seed, and from that single seed it generates a perfect sequence of forty prime numbers. Forty unbreakable numbers spinning out of one. Hidden, elegant order and strength from a single source.
Forty one doesn’t shout. It whispers a long line of beautiful, indivisible words.
IV. Troubles
My favourite discovery stopped me in my tracks. I stood next to the river this afternoon, frozen still like an idiot, staring at my findings on the phone in my hand, while Jasper snuffled through the tall grass a few steps ahead.
Sufism is a mystical tradition within Islam, and in this tradition, the number forty is deeply sacred. The Sufis practice something called a chilla. It is a spiritual retreat of forty days spent in solitary prayer and silence. Forty days of darkness and discipline and waiting. On the forty-first day, they return to the world, renewed.
The number forty is sacred in Hebrew and Christian traditions too.
It rained forty days and forty nights when Noah’s family rescued the animals in the Ark. The rain — the tribulation, the deluge, the darkness — lasted forty days. On day forty one, the clouds broke, and the sun shone through.
Jesus spent forty days fasting in the desert. He began his ministry on day forty one.
After Moses rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, the Jewish people spent forty years in the wilderness. It was year forty one when they entered the promised land.
Forty is trouble. Forty is flood. Forty is wandering through a long dark night.
Forty one signals the end of the storm. Forty one is rest and renewal; it is the assurance of solid ground in the morning sunlight.
Forty were nameless thieves. Forty one was Ali Baba.
V. Memories
And then — as if all that was not enough already — I remembered something. Something from when I was young. Until today, I never connected the memory to the number I have carried close to me all my life.
I was a boy when I watched the 1959 film Ben-Hur with my father. The story begins with a Jewish prince, standing on the rooftop of his home, along with his mother and his sister. As they watch a Roman procession on the street pass by, his sister accidentally knocks a tile from the rooftop; it falls and strikes the governor, knocking him from his horse. Immediately, Roman soldiers storm the house; to protect the women in his family, Judah tells the soldiers: it was my fault, it was under my hand the tile slipped.
He is arrested, falsely accused of attempted murder, found guilty, stripped of his title, and condemned to slavery on a Roman galley. He is no longer Judah. He is no longer a prince. He is no longer a man with a name. He is a slave chained to an oar. He is assigned a number. A seat number.
He is assigned the number 41.
When the Roman consul arrives on the ship — Quintus Arrius is his name — he walks the galley to inspect the rows of slaves on either side. Number 41 is the only man who meets his gaze. Arrius pauses, because he sees something in the man’s eyes that he does not see in the others. Dignity. Defiance. Something that refuses to break.
Later, in his quarters, Arrius says to him privately, “It is a strange, stubborn faith you keep. To believe that existence has a purpose. A sane man would have learned to lose it long before this.” And then he sends him away with these words: “Go back to your oar, Forty One."
When battle begins at sea, the consul orders every rower chained to his oar. Except one. Without any explanation, Arrius orders that Forty One be unchained. And in the heat of the battle, the slave who was unchained rescues his master from death.
The story unfolds, and eventually, Forty One reclaims his name and his freedom.
And here is one more small and rather lovely detail: in Lew Wallace’s original novel, written in 1880, the number assigned to Judah was not forty one. It was sixty. Someone in the 1959 film production changed it. Someone chose forty one.
Maybe for the same reason I did. There is a quiet and powerful magic hidden there.
VI. Choices
I said at the beginning that I don’t know if anyone else has a favourite number. I don’t know if my friend does. I don’t know if she has thought about the number forty one, beyond it being the age she turned this year.
But I considered it today, and this is what I decided: forty one is the best kind of number — the kind that chooses and the kind that is chosen.
I didn’t select the number as my favourite because it was lucky, or because it meant something I could understand. And I have carried it with me (for decades) without once inviting the number to explain itself to me.
Today, when I finally stopped to listen, I learned the number has been whispering wonderful things all along.
It says: You are prime. You are indivisible. And the most beautiful things you will experience in life are not behind you: they are about to begin.
Happy birthday, my friend. You are forty one. It is a great number.
The best number.
My favourite number.
Because of what you wrote, I realized so many things, and now I genuinely want to learn more about numerology and the symbolism behind certain numbers - including the date I was born