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How Big is Your Cube?

 

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How Big is Your Cube?

It was just a silly game at work. You know, the psychological kind that asks one to imagine a forest, a key on the ground, or a fork in the road. Each vision relates to one’s love life, likelihood of success, or hopes, dreams and fears.

I was asked to imagine standing in a desert. Then I was asked to imagine a cube.

“How large is the cube?” My co-worker asked.

I paused in contemplation. My hollow, iron cube was framed with braces of blue, yellow, green, and red. The kindergarten colors glinted brightly in the hot sun. It was difficult to determine the size for there was nothing relative to it on my parched desert except for the few rolling, grassy hills in the nearby background. “About the height of four elephants. Squared,” I finally answered.

“Wow!” the co-worker exclaimed. “I’ve never heard of anyone imagining a cube that large. But that makes sense for you, Mr. Watson.”

Other questions followed that required imagining flowers, a horse, and an oncoming storm. I soon unraveled my subconscious desires for love and friendship.

But the cube! The cube was me. It was how I perceived myself in relationship with my world. The size of my cube represented how highly I thought of myself. It was my ego. My love for myself was instilled shortly after I understood the unfathomable love of my adoptive mother. This love, in turn, made it easy for me to love others.

I consider myself a masterpiece. My greatness, however, is no greater than the skilled motion of a hummingbird, the perfect spiral of a seashell, or the precise speed of our Earths journey around our star. I am not a six-sided plastic toy that melts from the Sahara’s sun. I am the desert and everything in it.

I am the universe.

I realized my cube was not large at all. In fact, I was disappointed in knowing that I had so rudely restricted myself to the confines to something as minuscule as the four elephants I squared.  If the initial question was worded, ‘Imagine you are on an expansive desert, that gently rolls outwards as far as your eyes can see,’ I surely would have imagined a cube at least as huge as the Great Pyramid of Giza.

It is too late, however, to replay the game. It would be impossible for me to recreate my vision of the flowers, horse, and ensuing storm that will be forever crystallized in my brain. But what if my desert sketch pad was infinite- oblivion to the corner of my eyes? What if it was like a barren, never ending blank palette? How big would be my cube?

How big is your cube?

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