Everything2
Near Matches
Ignore Exact
Full Text
Everything2

Square peg in a round hole

created by the gazelle

(idea) by the gazelle (4.1 y) (print)   ?   (I like it!) Tue Aug 01 2000 at 13:36:46

Usually prefixed with "I feel like a..."

A phrase meaning to literally not fit in - to be out of place, or wrong for your environment.

I often feel like the proverbial square peg as I have chosen to work somewhere which really is not me. Smack bang in the middle of Corporate World, where creativity and ideas are less important than playing the game and towing the line. (Like many people this may be why I spend so much time on E2!)

Sometimes the feeling of my squareness being quite literally sanded down and forcibly rounded is palpable and I feel like my whole being is being shoved violently into this wrong-shaped hole while I yell, No No, let me stay square!

The thing about this saying is that pegs are round, as are holes. So by definition being the square peg makes you the odd one. But I quite like that.


(idea) by louisol (1.9 wk) (print)   ?   (I like it!) Wed Dec 26 2007 at 14:53:36

I have an issue with this "square peg in round hole" idiom that's so prevalent in english. It seems to me that it is - like a lot of other things (such as maps) - entirely upside-down.

You are not a square peg
trying to fit a round hole.

They are square boxes
desperate to contain
an expanding sphere.

Labeling someone a square peg carries with it the notion of being rigid and inflexible (in opposition to a round, intelligently designed environment?). How could that be? The very fact that you are reading something off a website like this (which no one was doing just a generation ago) contradicts the idea that you might be a square peg. Someone inflexible is the opposite: not exploring new concepts but resisting them. Someone inflexible would not be reading these words, they'd be running a corporation as if it's still 1922, or ruling a serfdom as if it's still 1322, or planning the expansions of Rome as if it's still 722, or grunting at women as if it's still 69,222 B.C. - the really square pegs are still assuming that people can't read and have no clue. All they do is build boxes, so they can feel more at home being square pegs. And so all the time they worry about how hot, new, round ideas will threaten their cold box.

They made even the environment square - desolate. Square people with square ideas built straight grids of roads and houses and shopping malls and skyscrapers, for other squares living in squares. And to rule their boxes they build pyramids in steps, to sit at the top.

Small children with no fear, that are simply happy while looking at flowers, or listening to birds say yes, are what's round. Smiling eyes are round. Love is round. Nature is round. Circles perfection. Spheres without fears fit anywhere, because they can be all sizes. All problems around round surround the boxes they try to impose around round (and the icy waters underground).

Inside round, the pyramids are made of quantum particles taking leaps. There is no direction, but every direction - no steps, but an endless path.


printable version
chaos

I recall the last 20 years as succinctly as I can in one node: bear with me The three geometric problems of antiquity to: jessicapierce re: Daily Evil The Square Peg
Witch pegs Radiohead Do not fall in love with Laura and do not let Laura fall in love with you peg
Borg If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads toe the line Fish out of water
The waiting game Riddle of the Spheres Toque double sider
Square Pegs Guardian Angel
Y'know, if you log in, you can write something here, or contact authors directly on the site. Create a New User if you don't already have an account.
  Epicenter
Login
Password

password reminder
register

Everything2 Help

Cool Staff Picks
Things you could have written:
Linotype
Halcyon
Buddhism
Paradoxes of Islamic Fundamentalism
Chihu's Big Painful Dental Surgery Log
AC-130H/U Gunship
map projection
American Mythology
Penises have higher bandwidth than cable modems
Abraham Lincoln
breast cancer
Willie Nelson
The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even
New Writeups
jessicaj
July 26, 2008(dream)
Berek
ABBA(person)
devolution
k-hole(place)
Nadine_2
The Sound Of Madness(review)
Twin Eclipse
Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue(idea)
SwimmingMonkey
Conversations with Fo Fo- the Loneliest dog in Purgatory(fiction)
locke baron
lynx(thing)
Simulacron3
Reality, Dimensions and the Natural Ontology(essay)
SubSane
Making Love to a 9-Foot Woman(person)
Ouzo
Thoughts(idea)
antigravpussy
I fall silent, listening. The breadcrumbs are talking about us(person)
calgon
Buffalo Bill by the pool(poetry)
gate
Anarchy is Order(idea)
ushdfgakjasgh
Scribeling(thing)
XWiz
Trism(review)
E2 is a by-product of the existence of The Everything Development Company