I’m fed up with you, π. I get it, you’re the ratio of the circumference to the diameter, good for you. But that isn’t enough for you, is it? No, you need to make sure everyone knows exactly who you are. You needed a day in your honor and competitions just for you. Was memorizing 100,000 of your digits not enough? No, of course not. It will never be enough. You are never ending.
If human memorization isn’t enough, surely calculating trillions of digits should suffice. Is 663 terabytes enough space for you? Is 864 GB of RAM enough memory for you? Is nearly half a year of continuous computing enough time for you? Calculating digits of you has cost humans thousands of computing hours on the world’s best cloud servers, and I don’t blame them. They, like everyone else, have become sucked into this never-ending cycle of discovering more, learning more, doing more for you.
You know what I think, π? I don’t think this is actually what you want. Clearly, there is a hole in you, a circular void, but these fruitless attempts at getting closer to the end aren’t what you truly desire. Everyone knows 3.14, and a lot of people know 3.1415, but how many people care that the next digit is 9? Even for those that do, they will still say 3.1415, and I’m sure that stings. Rather than appreciate a nice approximation and round to 3.1416, your loving followers are blinded by your never-ending being. Every digit we calculate gives us exponentially less information. All the while, we ignore the beauty in front of us. How many can say they have truly appreciated the 9 in the fifth decimal place of your expansion?
Every approximation we can fathom is finite. They will all be finite because your decimal expansion contains more information than we could store in every atom of the universe. Rather than fail to attempt to appreciate your unending presence, we should enjoy the finite. Bask in the glory of the approximations and reflect on how even good things can end. Round to the fourth decimal place rather than forever waiting for the fifth. Maybe then, we can finally see the end of π.