What Use is a Wheel?

Wholes and Parts

It is common to see references to the wheel as mankind’s first and greatest invention. That’s a big mistake. I invite you to think of ways to use a wheel on its own. You could roll it downhill or use it as a garden ornament, or perhaps play a game. It’s actually not much use at all.

The axle is a much greater invention. When you have an axle, you can put it through the wheel. You can connect a container to either side of the axle. Then you have a wheelbarrow. Better still, you can attach a wheel to either end, which gives you something wider and more usable. You can put something on top of the axle and pull or push it from one place to another. You have the makings of a chariot or a handcart, or even attach it to a donkey to carry a larger load. That is progress.

What’s my point here? This is about Relational Being. A wheel is an object. A nicely shaped and even aesthetically pleasing object perhaps, but nevertheless only an object.

An axle, on the other hand, is an invitation to relationship. It can bring two wheels together or connect your barrow to the single wheel. It occupies the space between a wheel and something else and makes if functional. It is the beginning of a system, and systems are collections of relationships. Two axles connected to each other form a chassis and provide you with four wheels that can support a structure that is horizontally stable. That is the foundation of automobiles and lorries, scalable to the size of an eighteen-wheeler. Literally and metaphorically, relationships and systems can take you a long way.

There’s a principle here. If you have any inclination to see what I have said as trivial, I encourage you to look wider and deeper. Your life is not a bunch of wheels but a set of axles. You probably see a lot of people, most of whom are unknown to you. But when you connect with one of them you make an axle, which might be called friendship, or relationship, or commerce. The friendship is a thing in its own right and you can even refer to it as a separate entity. Our friendship, our marriage. Where you have thought of those as being dyadic, with two people involved, there is in fact a triad.

Something exists in-between you and your partner. You can work on “our relationship”. Without “our relationship” you are two separate people. The relationship is where the action is. This principle extends to all areas of life. Life happens in the connection between things. There is no life in the things themselves. If you think of yourself as a thing, please change that because you are a collection of relationships between 40 trillion cells, between heart, lungs and brain, between muscles and bones.

Life is not about things. Everything in life happens in relationships between things, operates in that in-between place of connection and interaction. It takes place in the axles. That is the nature, the essence of Relational Being. That is why wheels are no use in themselves. They need axles. Likewise, you need relationality. Without it, there’s no life.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend`s or of thine own were: any man`s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind ... – John Donne

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Resources:
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Information about my books can be found on www.spiralworld.net or as follows:
The Science of Possibility: Patterns of Connected Consciousness
Your Access to Possibility: 7 Amazingly Simple Success Keys to Creating Your Life Consciously
7-Stage Parenting: How to Meet your Child's Changing Needs
Reinventing Capitalism: How We Broke Money and How We Fix it, From Inside and Out