I chose the above photo because it shows circular objects that appear to be associated with lines on the floor — and let’s assume that those objects are supposed to roll directly on one of those lines. There’s also the presence of humans in this photo, folx who seem like they could mess with those objects and their direction.So I’m proposing that you’re a circle, and your consciousness is a point that’s affixed to your circumference, and you roll along on the line of life. Rolling rolling rolling. You roll along, doing the regular thangs you do. And if your basic actions were spatially traced, they’d show your arcs of behavior.

The higher the arc goes, the more energy that is expended. This is showing some ideal steady behavior. 

The common definition of the word extended is “fully stretched out” or “drawn out in length”. Alas, in the everyday world, it’s become acceptable that there’s no automatic recalibration for that extension, no counter-balance guarantee.

And that’s what I love about the concept of extended in the math world as it applies to circles (aka cycloids) and their attached generating point.When extended, sure, you’re consciously reaching far outside of yourself but there’s gonna be a balance that’s not only dictated, it’s just a cold hard mathematical fact: as long as you keep rolling along the line, it’ll come to pass that, cyclically, your extension is gonna dip below the line and save some energy before it extends – and expends – once again.

Writing this reminded me about the vagus nerve (I mentioned it in the essay about invariants, Don’t Go Changin’ That Invariant). Essentially, the vagus nerve is the hub in your nervous system that involuntarily regulates things like our digestion or heart rate. It’s the longest nerve you have, stretching from your cranium to your belly, and what I find fascinating is that it can activate sensory reactions (smells, sights, etc) as well as motor-related reactions (muscle & limb and also glandular).

That all made me wonder: as we each shimmy on into the holidaze, soon to be followed by a brand new year of opportunities, do you think that if – nay, when – you extend yourself, and when you insist on immediately having a counter-balance of recuperation time, what might your vagus nerve have to say about that to your body?