Why does everything want to be a circle?

 This is the very first writing prompt from Julie Tallard Johnson's class "Writer as Shaman" that really captured my imagination. Written between 9/13/2013 - 9/18/2013. I feel this is an exercise I can return to again and again.

Why does everything want to be a circle?

Ever since this question has come up I have been meditating on it almost non-stop.

My first thoughts went to roller derby. For some reason, roller derby and roller skating have been with me my whole life.

Often when I am watching a bout, I try to imagine the jammers and blockers and pivots as atomic particles and the track as a particle accelerator. So more then, “why does everything want to be a circle” why doe we always want to travel a circular path?

Nearly everyone I have spent time with since last class I have brought up this prompt and most of the time, instead of “why does everything want to be a circle” becomes “Why does everything want to be round.

Sitting in a circle in a friend's  condo when a mutual friend was visiting from Minneapolis was simple natural. And while we weren't in a perfect circle I looked on the floor and there the throw rug was a perfect circle.

Talking to an old classmate about the usefulness of certain classes in highs school I brought up this writing prompt when she mentioned she has been a hair dresser and how working with the human head you are working with a person's personal geometry.

The reason everything wants to be a circle is because everything seeks completeness, wholeness. Our lives are a circle with life and death demarcations. Words like “womb” and “tomb” are very similar. Inside one, we come into the world. And then after we have already departed the world, our remains are committed to the other.

And while human beings are defined by their outer limits and seemingly shaped vertically, more or less, it is only within the sphere of ourself that we are infinite. It is inside our “circle” where we are free to travel anywhere. Anywhen.