They say that in probability, nothing is ever certain. Every presence carries the quiet possibility of absence. Every arrival already contains the chance of departure. It is the logic of chance, the mathematics of leaving.
Perhaps that is why I have come to despise it.
I remember the day my teacher tried to explain Bernoulli's Principle to us.
It was one of those slow afternoons. The fan turned lazily above our heads, pushing warm air from one corner of the room to the other.
My teacher stood in front of us holding two small balls tied to strings.
“Watch closely,” he said.
He hung the balls from a stand so that they dangled a few centimeters apart, swaying slightly in the still air.
“Now,” my teacher continued, “what do you think will happen if I blow air between them?”
Someone from the back answered confidently. “They’ll move apart, Sir.”
It sounded reasonable. If air pushes things, it should be pushed away from each other.
My teacher smiled a little. “Let’s see.”
He leaned forward and blew a steady stream of air between the two balls. To everyone’s surprise, the balls didn’t move away, instead, they moved closer.
A quiet murmur spread through the classroom as we watched the strings tilt inward, the balls gently touching as if pulled together by something invisible.
“This,” my teacher said, pointing to them, “is Bernoulli’s Principle.”
He began to explain that faster-moving air has lower pressure. The air between the balls created low pressure, while higher pressure outside pushed them together.
I watched the experiment carefully—the invisible air deciding where the balls would go, shaping their movement in ways that seemed almost unfair.
At the time, it felt like just another physics lesson—another principle to memorize. I didn’t find it exciting back then. But looking at it now, life seems to follow its own version of Bernoulli’s Principle.
People come close, drawn together by circumstances we can’t always see. And yet, just as easily, the forces around us shift. The air changes. The pressure moves elsewhere. And suddenly, they drift away.
Maybe that is why I have come to despise the idea that everything is governed by possibilities—that closeness can be temporary, that presence can dissolve as quietly as moving air.
Because I know what waits in that empty space.
For most of my life, I have been familiar with the company of silence. I have learned the long hours of solitude—the kind that stretches a room wider than it is, the kind that makes even small sounds feel like echoes.
So when someone finally sits beside you—when their presence softens the quiet—you do not want them to leave. Not out of obsession, nor from the desire to control them like something fragile that might slip away. It is something much simpler, and perhaps much sadder than that.
It is the knowledge of what waits when they are gone.
Because when you have spent so long walking alone, the presence of another person does not feel normal. It feels like rest. Like finally setting down a burden you have carried for far too long.
And so I find myself resisting the mathematics of chance, quietly hoping that this one presence might become the exception—that, just this once, probability will be wrong.
Written by John Benedict Banday, Insight PH
John Benedict Banday, Insight PH is a dedicated campus journalist and contributor. Their insightful writing sparks meaningful conversations and keeps the community informed.
