I've been thinking a lot about circles lately.
I've been thinking of all the ways in which they're incorporated into our lives and the phrases that we speak regularly.
Take, for example, "going in circles." It's either literally going in circles, as in being lost; or the feeling of going around and around in a conversation or a thought process without ever reaching a logical conclusion and always returning to the same place you just were. (Kind of like talking to a two-year-old. Or the cable company.)
I can tell you that, quite literally, I have gone in circles since moving to Oregon. Not that this has anything to do with location. I am what some might call "directionally challenged." I have no sense of direction. I never like it when a person (or a GPS) tells me to go East. I mean, I understand cardinal directions, and I know where the sun rises, but if it's high noon, night time, or cloudy, how can I figure out where East is? I have gotten lost and ended up going in the wrong direction everywhere from mall parking lots to European streets. It took me basically my entire life to learn my way around Reston, where I lived til I was about 23, and Manassas, where I spent the last 26 years of my life. (I still don't really know my way around Oakton or Fairfax, where I lived in between those two stints, and really, Reston has changed and grown so much that I no longer recognize it and get lost there too).
Since I've moved to Oregon, I have expected to get lost, even looked forward to it as a rite of passage. I read somewhere that to get to know a new town, you really shouldn't use your GPS. But seriously, I couldn't even find the bike path along the Willamette River (which is literally right behind my apartment building!) So I used the GPS for the first week or so, and then started testing myself.
I had to go to Walmart (sad, but true). I had been there several times already for necessities like a broom and a shower curtain and laundry detergent and even furniture! (The closest IKEA is two hours away in Portland). I felt like I'd been there enough times for the route to have become ingrained in my brain.
Do you know where this is going? Or will you need directions?
Yup, you guessed it. I did not find it, and after getting frustrated and ending up on the freeway, I put my GPS on and it took me on a circuitous route (another circle!) that literally had me entering and re-entering the freeway over and over again, quite definitely going in circles! Now, I will admit that it wasn't entirely the GPS' fault. I get confused when it says, "make a slight right" and there are two choices to go right. But you get the point.
Ask my friend Pam about me and directions. She'll tell ya. We went to Europe together summer before last, and the ONLY arguments we had were about how to get somewhere. I'd be staring at a street map, pointing to a location, saying, "We're here, right?" and she'd agree we were, indeed, there. "And we want to go HERE, right?" I'd ask, pointing to another spot on the map. Again, she'd agree. "So we turn right!" I'd state emphatically and triumphantly, and she'd shake her head and say, "Nope." And I'd demand that I was right. And she even gave in a couple times to prove to me that I was not correct at all. I had to give her the map after doing that a couple times. I had to let go and let Pam.
There was one trip in Bordeaux to a local grocery store, where we left the map at home because the store was just down the street! How hard could it be to get back? And yet, upon exiting, it only took us a block or so to realize we were not headed home and nothing looked familiar. We ended up going back to the store. Turns out it was a CIRCULAR building with many doors and exits and streets like wheel spokes at each exit, and we'd exited a different door than the one we'd come in. But it was Pam who found the right one. I cannot be trusted.
Then you have those circles we use when referring to friends and family. "Doesn't she have a lovely circle of friends?" "They really don't spend time in the same circles." And the saccharine, "We've built a circle of love around our family."
When I arrived here in Eugene, I missed my circle of friends back home. Or should I say circleS. I had my teaching friends and my church friends and my Arbonne friends. Different circles for different areas of my life. I knew I needed to meet a new circle of friends, so I joined a church and a choir, a Toastmaster's club, a women's networking group. The choir is fun, and we've already sung a couple ROUNDS.
What's interesting about friend/family circles is that we are often so afraid to allow them to intersect. Like a giant Venn Diagram, we decide if our circle of friends from childhood can mix well with our circle of friends from our stay-at-home mom days. We look for that intersection where the two circles make a skinny oval that says, "they all like wine!"
But circles seem exclusive when looked at this way. I've decided that rather than different hoola hoops of friends and relatives that may or may not cross over, my circles expand, like ripples in a pond. I've thrown myself into the middle of the pond of life, and my splash has made ever bigger circles that include a variety of lily pads, frogs, turtles, and algae. And rather than keeping them separate, I just keep expanding to let more in. I like this perspective more, don't you agree? You can't even follow me, can you? You're wondering if you're the frog. And the mixed metaphors are really messing with the logic. Well, at least it's not circular in nature (get it? IN NATURE?).
But let me circle back around here, because in this great circle of life, which can sometimes be a 3-ring circus, we often TIRE of repeating life's lessons, which can leave you spinning in circles and retreating into a fetal position. (Work with me here...babies are kind of round when in their mommy's tummies...okay, that's stretching it. Oh my gosh! Get it? STRETCHING it, as in a momma's belly? Okay. Wait. Now I'm way off course.)
Someone get me my GPS!
