Balaji Prasad
By Balaji Prasad
“A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape.” ~ Mark Twain
There are circles and squares, and triangles and rectangles, and such, in the world we know. Or are there?
Is it possible that the strange shapes that populate our heads are really shapes that we shaped? Maybe there are no such things in the real world that correspond to these shapes? Maybe our creative minds spin a parallel universe that aspires to turn with the world as the world turns? But never quite manages to?
It’s me, not you!
The world is dogmatic! It has a mind of its own, and spins where it spins, seemingly unmindful and uncaring about the poor mind that observes, plaintively hoping that it spins the way that it is “supposed” to spin.
But we do much more than hope: we engage with the world with our decisions and actions that we believe will eventually make the South the North, and the North the South. But try as we might, things just seem to happen the way they do. Could it be that the problem lies with us, and not with the world? Could it be that we may even do the very opposite of what we should do, and when things go awry, we simply point to the world and say “You!” when we really ought to be saying “It’s me, not you!”
Shaping the shaper
If we are able to come to terms with the fact that there are, in fact, two universes – the one inside our heads, and one that might exist in the place we call “the world” – it’s the dawn of a new day. If we can stop treating parabolas and hyperbolas from the real world as circles and triangles, maybe we would make a different set of decisions and take a different set of actions, and engage more productively with the things around us. Just because we don’t recognize the existence of parabolas and hyperbolas doesn’t mean those shapes don’t exist.
Maybe if our understanding expands, we add to our repertoire of shapes by including these hitherto unknown shapes. And the next time around, the parabola will be part of our parables, and the hyperbola will not be dismissed as mere hyperbole.
But shaping our shapes is easier said than done.
“Shapeless” is a shape too
Two things are needed before we can reshape our shapes. First, we need to be willing to do it. Secondly, we need to be able to do it.
Willingness is not overly easy to engender within, when we have fallen in love with the shapes inside us. Especially if we believe that they have served us well, and we have therefore grown fond of them. It may, of course, not be true at all that these shapes have served us well; it may only appear so because when things didn’t work as expected, we have usually placed the blame elsewhere, on things that lie outside, and which were beyond our control. As a result, we may tend to do more of the same, and even do it with more intensity, in the mistaken view that quantity rather than quality was the reason for the often-painful failures.
Ability is also not a given. If we are too eager for “solutions”, we may simply jump from the frying pan to the fire in search of new shapes that may even be worse than the ones we are already mired in. The ability to align with the truths of the real world requires humility and patience; we must wait and watch as we experiment and iterate through our reshaping, seeing what really works, and what doesn’t. And realize that having no predefined shapes that fit situations may be a better state of being than contrived nonsense that gives us a false sense of comfort and security.
The rectangles and circles, squares and triangles can be useful. So, there is nothing wrong in using them as approximations and crutches. But getting addicted to them or being romantically entangled with them may result in a strange and misshapen world.
It may be wise to stay shapeless while we search for new shapes.
Balaji Prasad is an IIT/IIM graduate, a published author, SAT/ACT Online and in-person Coach, and K-12 Math Tutor at NewCranium. [email protected]
