The Best Number

Six writers of varied backgrounds opine on "What’s the best number?"

Their answers--13, 17, 42, 747, 200 billion, and infinity (∞)--are by turns whimsical and thoughtful.

On Sunday, the first day of the week, it may seem fitting to celebrate ONE, the beginning of the natural numbers, and the rank that everyone is striving to be in the good old U.S. of A.

I'm partial to THREE, however. It's the day of the month when I was born and connotes stability (a three-legged stool, a tricycle versus a bicycle). Besides, three is the limit of the number of things I can retain in memory.

As we visit our place of worship today, three is also a reminder that the world and beyond are more complicated than the monotheistic one.

O blessed glorious Trinity,
Bones to philosophy, but milk to faith,
Which, as wise serpents, diversely
Most slipperiness, yet most entanglings hath,
As you distinguish'd, undistinct,
By power, love, knowledge be,
Give me a such self different instinct,
Of these let all me elemented be,
Of power, to love, to know you unnumbered three.
                    ---John Donne