“A Perfect Cube”

By Ron Stultz

 7 September 2005

I read once, somewhere, that Warner Von Braun, one of the German scientists responsible for the development of the German V2 rocket and later head of the US space program, while he was in school as a young boy, was given a lump of metal and told to make it into a perfect cube.   

A perfect cube. Not a cube where one side had a length or width or height of .00001 of an inch longer or shorter than any other side, but where all sides had the exact, identical dimension. Think about it. Think how hard it would be to make a perfect cube? 

I do not remember if Von Braun ever succeeded and I doubt it as I doubt if it is even possible to make a ”perfect” cube but what I do remember him saying about the effort, project, was that he learned something about precision he never forgot. 

Perhaps not the greatest of analogies but I propose to you that we are borne like that lump of metal given to Von Braun and our project in this life is to make ourselves as perfect a cube as possible. Oh, not in height, width and depth, of course but perhaps mentally, emotionally and spiritually.  

Can mental, emotional and spiritual be dimensions of our lives, which must be equal? Should they be equal? 

And the point to being a perfect cube? Really no point at all but rather I propose that in this life, we must strive to gain some sort of understanding and depth in all the dimensions defined above. 

Thinking about it, why should not each of the dimensions defined be equal to all other dimensions? 

Of the 3, our society, our culture tends to want to refine the mental dimension via public education and totally ignore the other 2 dimensions. Emotions, how much time is spent in public schools teaching anything about our emotional dimension? None or practically none and yet, as human being, driven by 100’s of 1000’s of years of DNA, we have this need to couple and procreate and yet the emotions related to this significant personal and cultural event, dimension are total left of to the individual to struggle with on their own. And what lathe, tools do we have to make our emotional dimension as wide or deep or tall as our mental side? 

Spiritually, some do get education and via the church have some tools to develop a good spiritual side of our life cube, but not all.  Certain, the hoodlums and thugs which inhabit our largest cities which will kill for any reason or one reason at all, have no spiritual side and thus are perhaps only 1 dimensional, if that. 

3 dimensions, I am talking about 3 dimensions, which I guess is the starting place of any cube but thinking about it, I see where many people are only one or 2 dimensional at the most, which is too bad as only being 3 dimensional seems to me to be the right model or at least the beginning of a life model. 

Mathematicians and physicists talk about and equation 4, 5, or 20 different dimensions and I am sure it can be argued that my 3 dimensional model is too limiting in that there are many other aspects of our living which should be considered and perhaps they are right. And certainly, inside the dimension I call emotional, there are as many sub-dimensions as there are emotions and certainly the dimension of mental is incredibility broad and deep having dimension upon dimension to it but in the end, 3 dimensions ought to do for starts. 

If I look at my own life’s cube, certainly the mental side is longer than either of the other 2 sides of my cube face, partly this is cultural as defined above but also partly it is genetic and my environment as my emotional life was stunned and did not grow for a very long, long time. Spiritually, this side of my life cube does not exist but for the longest time was always being compared to my mental side and the mental side wanted to be longer, taller, wider. Yet, as I continue the refinement of my mental cube side and go deeper and deeper into parallel universes of dimensions, the parallel lines are beginning to converge on the spiritual, which is interesting and amazing. 

A perfect cube. And if I managed to make as myself as perfect a cube as possible, would I die then? If I die before my life cube is “perfect” do I have to come back into this plane of existence, again and again until all sides of the cube are equal? 

Mental, emotional and spiritual.  Height, width and depth. What tool do you use or anyone use to measure the life cube? Do we feel balanced or out of balance when one side is “longer, wider or higher” than another side? 

Oh, perhaps in the end, not a good analogy at all, the cube to the progression of our lives but one worth a thought, I hope.