Railing Codex

等，无尽的等待。在封城的日子里，似乎唯一能做的事情就是等——等核酸，等物资，等解封……这种状态很像在玩悠悠球——时间是一条绳子，一端系着我的欲望，而我一次一次地将它掷向未知。当看到“等”字出现在选词表时，我的内心五味杂陈。
然而要解释它是复杂的，“等”是一个多义的字。在数学中，“等”表示数量的差异——如“等于”、“不等式”；从社会学的角度，“等”可以指代人与人的差别——如“等级”、“公等”；作为动词，“等”则与“待”近义。然而我怀疑存在着一种解释，它能够统一“等”字的不同涵义。
我们可以在“等”的多义中找到一些相通的东西。在数字的世界里，要得出“等”与否的结果，前提是对量的测量，而数字是其基础的表达形式。同样，在社会的领域里，也广泛存在着各种测量人的形式。如分数之于能力、货币之于财富、头衔之于地位……社会就在各种被测量的差异中划分了三六九等。而作为一种行为的“等”，似乎也是一种测量的过程——人以生命丈量世界的变化。
有些人总是不满足于等待在变化的后面，试图事前知晓甚至掌控世界的规律。他们有的成了占卜师，政客或科学家，发明了宗教、律法与科学。从这个角度而言，“等”也许体现了一种人的理性，标志着人对永远变化的世界的思考与追问。

Waiting, endlessly waiting. During the lockdown, it seemed like the only thing I could do was wait—wait for the PCR test, wait for supplies, wait for the lockdown to end . . . It felt like playing with a yo-yo: time was a string with my desires tied to one end, which I kept flinging over and over into the unknown. 
 
And yet it’s complicated to explain. The Chinese character for waiting, deng, has multiple meanings. In mathematics, it expresses a comparison between quantities, as in _dengyu _(equals) and budengshi (inequality); in sociology, it can refer to a difference between people, as in dengji (rank or hierarchy); as a verb, it’s a near synonym to dai (to treat or await). And yet I suspect that there exists an interpretation that can unite these different senses.
We can find commonalities in the multiple meanings of deng. In the numerical world, obtaining a result that is or is not “equal” requires measuring one quantity against another, for which numbers are the basic form of expression. Likewise, in the social terrain, there exist multiple ways of measuring people, as in, for example, grades to measure ability, money to measure wealth, or titles to measure status: society divides people based on the differences measured. And as an action, waiting too seems like a process of measurement: people gauge the world’s changes against their own lives.
Some people are unhappy waiting for change and seek to know or even control the world’s rules in advance. Some become fortune tellers, politicians, or scientists; they invent religions, laws, and sciences. In this sense, perhaps deng embodies a form of human rationality, the sign of our thinking about and questioning an ever-changing world. 