William Blake, The Ancient of Days: The Division of Light and Darkness (1794)

We often act if the only things that matter are the things that we can measure
Equating quantifiability with quality and metrics for meaning
In a scientific world we like to measure and enumerate
Statistically straining our lives into sets of data to be examined
Living for our curricula vita rather than the unmeasurable moments of meaning
And perhaps someday we will describe the mathematics of love and passion
But lives that are lived seek the meaning that defies the metrics
We live not for numbers but for stories, for feelings and values
Our impact is felt in the quality of connections we cultivate
Rather than the quantity of work we manufacture
Numbers have their necessity and their place in our world
And metrics cannot give us the meaning that our lives seek

Neil White, 2015