Tuesday, October 19, 2010

A Romantic Thought

Picture taken from site

I've read a cute little book back in college called Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. It is a fantasy book about a two dimensional world, and in it the inhabitants are various two dimensional shapes, such as a square. In this world, the more edges and perfect symmetry you have the greater your status, the highest being a perfect circle. It was clever, farcical, and sexist. Women are lines (one dimensional) with sharp pinnacle points on both ends and they are sometimes known to stab and kill their two dimensional husbands in fits of feminine misunderstanding and then forgets about it.

Anyway, there is a moment in the book when a promising pentagon-shaped child questions if there is the possibility of a third dimension, which he could not envision however hard he tries. I would like to think of the universe the same way. Everything from laws of physics, life, free will, chaos, music, light. It is a comfort to know that the universe holds more secrets than I can possibly discover, such as another dimension I cannot fathom. This ensures that in life, possibilities are endless, forever stretching, even if my imagination ceases to follow. And it puts out there the hope that if I am wise, the universe may unravel its secrets a little, just for me. And if I remain humble, I would see it in the end, a spectacular sight it will be.

Jackie

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