Reinventing the Wheel

Think about your own self for a minute. Now think through your family, friends, associates, co-workers, folks you meet on the street regularly enough to say hello to, folks you don’t know as well, people you know on line but not in person, people you might know something about via media … basically, everybody you know or know of.

You’ve just defined your own interpersonal spiral. It begins with you and spirals out from you to include all of the others. Because your spiral now has a definition, it has just become a cognitively recognized part of you and cannot ‘un-become’. It is now a permanent part of your memory. At odd moments for the rest of your life it will pop into your consciousness.

Each and all of us have these interpersonal spirals, all of which flow out from us as individuals to intersect and interlock with those of everyone else. This too is going to pop into your mind at odd moments for the rest of your life. The interactions of each can and do affect all.

Since it’s on your mind at this moment, think about the good, the bad, and the ugly that each of the above persons has in them, beginning with your own self. There’s some of each in all and well you know it.

Now that the thought is right here, so to speak, let’s reinvent the wheel.

You’ve no doubt got your individuals pegged into categories. That’s because we do that automatically. We like orderliness and will arrange patterns instinctively. When you think ‘good’, or ‘bad’, or ‘ugly’ a certain subset of individuals will come into your mind. Although you know full well that each of those individuals also has each of the other characteristics, the way you view them based on your experience is going to define their identity on your spiral.

You’ve just defined the spokes of your own interpersonal wheel, the one of which you are the hub. The strengths and weaknesses of all of the individuals included in your interpersonal spiral have designated their place on one of the spokes of said wheel.

And that wheel goes ‘round and ‘round, your life being the path on which it turns.

‘But,’ you say, ‘I don’t want some of those people to be a part of my spiral, or my wheel.’

Too bad.

They are there and there they will remain. You can try to remove them all you want; they will not leave you. Ever. Once included, they cannot be excluded. Ever. Once someone or something has become a part of your cognitive recognition, you cannot un-recognize them or it.

Sorry.

That’s just the way we’re designed.

On the plus side of this whole thing is that the negatives do play a vital role. Accepting that will help you reconcile their presence in your spiral, your wheel.

You see, not only do we seek and find patterns because it is instinctive to us, we also MUST have balance. That’s probably the most basic law of all of creation.

And so, as the wheel of your own individual spiral traverses the path of your life, each of those spokes in turn hits the ground. The impact travels up that spoke straight to you at the hub. The wheel is balanced, and balanced it must be – all the time. Each of those spokes is exactly as important as all of the others. Trying to get rid of any of them is a lesson in futility. We are absolutely unable to do it.

Your individual spiral and wheel are of the most importance to you; mine are most important to me; everyone else’s are most important to them. That’s the way it’s designed.

However, our individual spirals do indeed intersect, interact, and interlock with those of everyone else. The scale expands from us as individuals on outward to include our families, friends, associates, co-workers, folks we meet on the street regularly enough to say hello to, folks we don’t know as well, people we know on line but not in person, people we might know something about via media … basically, everybody we know or know of.

Because the individual spirals of all those others also intersect, interact, and interlock with those of everyone else’s, the spiral keeps expanding and growing. Our uniquely individual spirals are part of a much bigger one.

The pattern is set, immutable.

Science calls it PHI, the Golden Mean, Perfect Balance, whatever. Folks of Faith know it as God’s Plan. Either way, it cannot be changed. It is Law and we are governed by it. From the enormity of the Universes to the tiniest sub-particles we are able to identify, our world is governed by the spiral, the balance of energy that literally cannot be altered.

So when you, just like me and everyone else, would really love to just get rid of the ‘uglies’, remember that we flat cannot do it. That’s not much consolation, is it?

What we CAN do is try to fill our own spirals, our spokes with as many of the ‘good’ folk as we possibly can manage. By doing so, we may be able to collectively bind our own positive spirals more closely together which would force the negatives onto fewer spokes, so to speak.  Overall, there will still be the same number of positives and negatives, but maybe, just maybe, we can minimize how often our negative spokes hit the paths of our lives by focusing on developing the number of positive ones … which would have the effect of concentrating the negatives into a few powerful spokes rather than spreading them out into more, but less high-impact, ones.

Again, small consolation, eh?

We cannot change the Law. Balance will prevail, no matter what.

Choosing to throw the power of our collective energy in on the positive side of the equation, however, might just make more of a difference in our individual lives than we think it could.

The ugly is always going to be with us in equal proportion to the good. That’s kind of a given.

But we don’t have to be any more a part of it than we absolutely have to on an individual basis.

Choose to seek, find, and nurture the good that is all around you. Focus on the beautiful, the kind, the gentle, the strength of the good, because it is powerful indeed.

At the same time, do not neglect to recognize that the ugly is with us, as all around us as the good is. What good we choose to seek, find, and nurture will be our defense against the ugly.

So as you’re thinking about your interpersonal spiral and the wheel that rolls along the path of your life, think about how you can strengthen the positive spokes so that when the negative ones hit that path they will have less of an impact on you at the hub. By strengthening your own spiral, your own wheel, you are strengthening those of the folk whose spirals most closely intersect, interact, and interweave with yours. That bigger spiral too becomes stronger, and spreads faster and further than you can imagine.

It’s a bit of an irony, isn’t it, that the bigger and stronger the negative becomes, the more likely it is that the positive will react by coming to the fore to counter it. But so it is. So it has to be. Balance will prevail.

We can, each and all of us, choose whether to put our personal energy into the equation for good or for ill. It is already a part of the bigger spiral, but we really do get to pick which direction we are going to send the power of our individual energy.

I get to choose; so do you.