The Spherical Solution

A month ago I wrote a post titled My Life As a Triangle. I ended it with this:

"Well, how are the two O's supposed to form a companionship? The point of having a companion is that each of you complete what the other is not. You fill the voids in their lives and help them grow. You cannot be your own entirely separate person, already perfected to work in a companionship- you must be able to flop, bump, bounce, and roll together."

I realize that our role in a relationship is not to be there to fill another's voids. They have to do that themselves but like I said above, in a companionship you do complete and compliment each other. It was pointed out to me tonight (now last night because my stupid internet quit working) that in a two dimensional world, of course circles cannot be together. However, circles can be combined in a greater dimension to form a sphere. I can't believe I missed that. How beautiful is it that by combining two forms of perfection, they can further create a higher dimension of perfection together? 

How often have we limited ourselves because of this two dimensional perspective? 

Viewing situations and lives in various dimensions takes me back to a short story I read a few years ago in what was probably my favorite class at ASU (although my crying over those awful "thesis" papers didn't quite point to that conclusion). 

The class was an honors human event course with a science focus. For once in my life I actually felt challenged in a topic I enjoyed. We read things like Origin of the Species and works from other great men like Copernicus, Decartes, Galileo, Newton, Freud, and Fukuyama. We studied genocides, the double helix, narcissism, self deceit, superposition, and evolution. 

Luckily, my genius past self was intelligent enough to save all of these electronic readings which I just now decided to indulge myself on once more.

Some of these documents I found more interesting than others. The brainwashing of Nazi leaders is of more interest to me than Vermeer's paintings..

The piece I fell in love with and read multiple times simply because I enjoyed it is titled Flatland: A romance of many dimensions.

It's fairly long, about fifty pages, but I highly encourage you to read this. For one of the papers I wrote in the class, I chose this text as the basis for my reasoning. Reading over it again, I can see where my writing style and abilities have grown drastically. Quite possibly due to these blog posts. 

To give a quick summary of the plot, a square is approached by a sphere which attempts to teach the square of a third dimension. It's the science version of A Christmas Carol. Kinda. The story line moves through multiple dimensions- from the point who cannot even comprehend sound (since a 0-dimension point is literally its entire world) to a line who comprehends sounds but cannot comprehend the motion of moving side to side, to a square who does not understand how the sphere can pass through the square's world, to the sphere doubting the existence of a fourth dimension. Each example of a lower dimension seems to us an obvious answer and explanation as to how another dimension exists but when we reach the sphere attempting to comprehend a fourth dimension, we can only create analogies- it is impossible for us to truly comprehend a dimension greater than our own.

My argument: Analogy is not the key to accepting, but to understanding. Only with first hearing, seeing, and then understanding through an analogy was the square able to comprehend physically existing in a three dimensional world. Even so, when he is placed into the sphere's three dimensional world, the square states that, "Either this is madness or it is Hell" to which the sphere replies that, "It is neither. It is knowledge" (43). Due to the fact that the square first understood the existence of a world with three dimensions before entering that world, after his first moment of shock he quickly accepted the idea that he had previously learned. Through the sphere's analogy that caused understanding of another dimension, the square was able to "look and behold a new world" (43).

My point with all of this is that how often do we view our relationships in a two dimensional world? 

How often do we become frustrated that something doesn't fit right or cannot possibly exist, no matter how much effort we put into it because we want it to work?

Well, with a third dimension those things can exist. 

What creates that third dimension? 

The answer is simple:

God.

Two perfected circles cannot be together as they should be without someone with a greater understanding to introduce them to a third dimension.

Sure, we can hear about it. We can see a change. We can create analogies. 

Those things can help us to understand. 

But it takes something more to truly BE.