In Euclidean geometry, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. You probably remember an awesome math teacher teaching you that concept in junior high. “Awesome math teacher” is a bit of any oxymoron, in my experience, but I have been assured  there’s one or two out there.

Sadly, poor Euclid was wrong. I know. I should storm the halls of academe and announce him for the fraud he clearly is. I’ll be carried over people’s shoulders, lauded by universities around the globe and  given the Nobel prize! Well…okay…Euclid may have been right in the context of geometry, but in life his notion that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line just doesn’t hold water (I thought I’d bring Archimedes into the room for kicks).

Not so, Euclid, old chum. In fact, sometimes it’s the twists and turns, dead ends, long stretches of misdirection, and hopeless navigational sleights of hand that get us where we need to go the most expeditiously. In other words, we must be lost in order to be found.

Consider this: if we are standing in a cluttered room and are asked to find one small object, it can be very difficult if not impossible to spot it. Yes, we’re currently IN the room…the shortest distance to the object. But being in the room in not helpful. Everything around us is amorphous colour without definition. It’s the very reason we say, “Can’t see for looking.” In order to find the object, we may have to walk out of the room – get some distance – in order to return and discover what was right in front of us all along. Happens all the time.

How many times have you found what you were looking for right under your nose? It’s as though it was suddenly deposited by elves determined to compromise your confidence in your mental health. It was only went you stopped searching that you could discover. It was only when you walked away that you could come nearer to the thing you needed. Happens all the time. Euclid was wrong.

In life, the shortest distance between points is often the distance itself…if that doesn’t sound too esoteric. Distance (or ‘leaving the room,’ to go back to my analogy) allows the subconscious, as the brilliant Carmen Spagnola recently taught me, to ‘school’ the conscious mind. Our conscious minds tend to need a lot of remedial help if you ask me.

So, Euclid may have known a ton about geometry, but his ideas aren’t much use in life. Sorry, pal. At least Archimedes gave us the good sense to either get into the bath tub earlier or turn off the water sooner.  Now THAT’s practical life advice!

Would we want to get from point A to point B in the shortest distance? I don’t think so. Not much fun or learning in that. It’s like any road trip: getting there is half the fun. And usually,  after all the bumbling around, just as you’re ready to give up searching, you stand there incredulously…because, often, point A is point B. And your straight line is actually a circle. And when you return to where you started, you give the searchers’ universal cry: “There you are!”

“Where have you been?” you ask as the veil is lifted on the real purpose of your journey.

But by then, you already know the answer.

“I was right here.”

Euclid was wrong.