Circles are Good, Squares are Bad

I was protecting the soccer goal like Jake Sully did Pandora, however I was wearing khaki corduroy jeans with grass stained white knee pads — not one of those blue Avatar suits. We were the Fiske Flames, wore fire red and were wicked awesome. We were the talk of the Lexington public school system. My coach at the time, I can’t even recall his name, yelled to me, “just remember Eth-dog, circles are good, squares are bad.” I’m not sure why, but it made perfect sense to me.

Since that day, however, I have not been able to shake that thought from my head. And with the Olympic rings plastered everywhere, I'm speculating day and night.

My obsession with this underlying theme started slowly with an increase in bagel consumption. I progressed to setting my alarm clock for 10:00 a.m. just to remind me it was 10:00 a.m. Then I got in a fight with my teammate, Mark LaValle, over which one of us would get the No. 8 game jersey when our next soccer season rolled around. OK, I may have had a small problem, but seriously, circles are better than squares: onion rings, the elusive silver dollar, mother earth, boobs. During college I excelled at the dive bar scene because I could hit the bulls-eye in darts and sink the eight ball in pool. Even Jan. 1, 2000 was an epic day (01/01/00) because Y2K didn’t kill me and I was hurling a disc on a beach in South Africa … the list goes on.

I could never grasp why this circle/square curiosity constantly plagued me until I was diagnosed with cancer. Having cancer, I spent an inordinate amount of time in the hospital. And to me, the hospital is bad. Yes, it smashed my cancer into remission, but I hated going there every other week for chemotherapy treatments — cold hands and pill popping (not the good kind).

Hospitals are overflowing with squares, therefore squares have controlled my life for the past year. The building itself is giant square the size of an entire New York City block. The hallways are square, with square photos frames and square electrical outlets. The chemo room is squarely decorated with a square TV, complete with a square remote control. There were 8,400 little one inch square tiles in my bathroom. The bags of chemo, food trays, band aids, gauze pads all have four right angles. Squares suck and can box you in.

Anthropologist Angeles Arrien has a book about shapes called The Preferential Shapes Test. This test provides a window into a person's individual experiences, as well as clues to the direction of their future growth. The circle and square happen to be two of the five archetypal shapes that Arrien speaks about. Along with the triangle, spiral and cross, each one has specific meaning. The circle involves completion, wholeness and integration. A circle of course, is also infinity, which makes me think I will live for a long time. The square means stability, grounding and practicality. Kind of boring, but important.

In addition to the spiritual stuff, one thing that keeps my faith in circles alive is all the fabulous faces I got to see everyday. This renews my faith in the concept that circles are good and squares are bad. Jenna, my mom, family, friends, docs, nurses and the Jamaican woman that sang to me — they all have wonderful circular faces that make me smile. They gave me hope in a place covered with squares. Take a moment and think about what shapes mean to you. Weird, I know. But more importantly, it's nice to celebrate the special faces in your life. If you need some guidance you can always just sit back and enjoy curling the rings of the Olympics.

Photos by Ethan Zohn.