100% Is Less Than Infinity

We think of 100% as totality. Completion. Certainty. But here’s the mystical twist: 100% is less than infinity. And your life belongs to the infinite.

For centuries, we’ve used numbers to make sense of the world. Percentages, in particular, give us a language for likelihood, for risk, for scope. They are clean, compact symbols of order. And we treat 100% as a sacred number—a measure of everything, of full capacity, of absolute truth.

But 100% is not the end. It is not even the whole. It is simply the top of a box.

The Illusion of 100%

In statistics, 100% defines a closed system. It means we’ve accounted for all observable outcomes within the bounds of our study. But human life is not a closed system.

Statistics can tell us that 70% of new businesses fail, that 80% of marriages begun in youth won’t last, that less than 1% of mathematicians in the U.S. are Black women. But they cannot tell us who you are. They cannot tell you what you carry, what you will become, or what sacred deviation is already living inside your DNA.

“Never tell me the odds.” — Han Solo

I’ve lived beyond the data set. I was married at 23 and widowed at 44. According to the CDC, the median age of widowhood in the United States is 59. Young widowhood is considered an anomaly—and so is my career: a Black female mathematician from Cleveland. Fewer than 1% of U.S. mathematics doctorates are held by Black women. By the data, I shouldn’t exist. But I do.

And as a mathematician, I understand how strange it must sound to hear me shuck the numbers. But my opinions don’t stem from doubt, fear, or ignorance. It’s just the opposite. I trust numbers precisely because I understand what they are and how they work. I know how statistics are calculated, what assumptions must be made, and how many things are left out.

I know the value of statistics—and I know where their damage lies. That’s why I’ve learned to ignore them in most cases.

Where the Numbers Fail

Statistical models are useful. They help us make decisions at scale. They point to trends in health, education, economics. But they do not describe spirit. They do not measure soul.

The very word “percent” comes from the Latin per centum, meaning “by the hundred.” It was developed to simplify calculations in trade, taxation, and finance—a tool of efficiency, born to quantify gain and loss. Over time, percentages crept from ledgers into laws, policies, classrooms, and diagnoses. They became a language of control. Percentages began to regulate the world.

And if you believe the game is rigged, then statistics is one of the ways it’s done. Because statistics only study what the researcher believes is important to study. The questions are crafted, the data sets are chosen, the margins of error are calculated. People find themselves being held hostage by data that may or may not have anything to do with them.

A statistic might say there’s a 99% chance of failure—but it cannot measure your resilience. It cannot see your calling, or your ancestors, or the friction in your bones that tells you something different is possible.

When you build a life based only on what the data says is likely, you may miss what is destined.

“If you’re always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.”
— Maya Angelou

The Infinity Principle

Infinity is not a number—it is a realm. In mathematics, we approach it asymptotically: we can get closer and closer, but we never touch it. Still, it shapes the curve. It changes everything.

Mystically, infinity is the dimension where logic loosens and new forms emerge. It’s where the unpredictable, the miraculous, and the soul-deep transformations live.

Infinity is where the sacred enters the equation.

Infinity says: even if something is 100% true in your past, it doesn’t have to be true tomorrow.

Infinity says: you can still become what has never existed.

Outliers Are Divine Disruptions

In statistics, outliers are the points that don’t fit. They’re often discarded so they don’t skew the results. But in real life, outliers are the ones who expand the model.

They are the revolutionaries. The mystics. The inventors, poets, and prophets who step outside the pattern and bring back something the world has never seen.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” — George Bernard Shaw

You are not the glitch. You are the guide.

The Life Beyond 100%

There is life beyond the known. Beyond the model. Beyond the 100%.

Let the data inform your map—but let the infinite write your story.

Because the greatest truths can’t be measured. The deepest callings won’t fit in a percentage.

And the most beautiful outcomes? They come from beyond the curve.

They come from you.