(Something I've written a while back and found on my computer, appologies if I already published)
When you are one dimensional, there are only two shapes in the world – a line and a circle. Other, higher dimensional beings may forever try to explain to you the difference between a wiggly line and a straight one, a triangle and an ellipse, but you simply cannot get it. As you trudge your way on-wards in your single dimension, you are either in a new place (a line) or some place you have been before (a circle).
Now most folks I know get rather insulted when someone calls them “two dimensional”. So who is this poor one-dimensional person I am talking about? Well, truth is, when it comes to time, it is me and probably you. I’m not even talking about the mystery of how we move in time, but rather on the question of how we perceive time. At the basic level we perceive it as circular: breakfast, lunch, dinner, sleep, the changing seasons, that yearly vacation or holiday or whatever. Or as linear: “By the age of 7 Joe was already … In College he met this beautiful girl … but when the economic crisis hit he had to …”.
Even expressions like “I wish time would stop” actually do not mean really make it stop (with me forever frozen in mid-thought), but rather take this last linear piece and make it into a circle.
Off course this being our perception, when we tell a story we have some control over it: We can decide if the story we tell will be a circle: In the end the hero having solved the conflict/saved the world will return to where he was before. Or linear – our hero was transformed by what happened. You can view your life as a sitcom or classical TV detective series - where at the end of each episode everything is back as it was, or you can view it as those modern “story-line” series were in each chapter or episode the characters actually change and transform (and hopefully grow), and things are not as they were before.
Personally I feel that the linear point of view is better for achieving things, while the circular point of view is better for gaining serenity and peace of mind. Perhaps it is no surprise that those religions or philosophical systems that put Nirvana as their ultimate goal are also the ones that take the most linear of stories: “he was born, he lived and grew and then he died…” and transform it into a circle “… and then he was born again”.
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