In the seventh grade, they taught about dimensions. The first dimension is just a dot and the second dimension is a line. The third dimension is objects that you can touch and feel. Most of us stop here.

Sometimes, we hear about the fourth dimension which is time but we don’t really talk about that one a lot in math class because humans can’t perceive it even though we experience it. We can measure time somewhat using our hours and minutes or days and seasons but we don’t know its shape. It might be a line or a circle or a spiral or even some oblong irregular shape that’s just as complex as our three dimensional world. Whatever it is, the curvatures of time remain mysterious to us.

Based on that, the fifth dimension should be choice because making choices is how we navigate the shape of time. However, choice is even more elusive than time because we are trapped here in the third dimension. We debate about choice versus fate but we have not even attempted to measure the length of a single choice.

The astrologer Amy Green once told our peer support group that, when people lose the part of their brains that scientists believe to be responsible for making choices, that we remain perfectly functional. We make choices in our minds second later after we make them in our actions. In fact, the moment that we think that we make a choice, the moment of conceptualization and recognition, is actually just a memory of the choice that we already made. When we lose the part of our brains that is responsible for making choices, we continue to make choices but we lose our ability to remember them as we make them. So, we don’t feel like we are making choices.

And, no, choice is not variety. It’s not about options. Choice is the series of actions that you took before you realized that you trust yourself. Choice is what changes the way that you experience time, the actions that are worth remembering and narrating. It’s about making a life. Choice is the dimension that we produce history through.

It’s not about making good choices or bad choices. As third dimensional creatures, we can’t even perceive time.

As Grace Lee Boggs says, the first step of initiating movement is to ask yourself and everyone in the room with you, “What time is it?” We make choices because we are trying to enact change but our bodies are built for memory. We make choices because we are trying to figure out the mysterious shape of time. What time is it right now?

Somewhere inside of choice, there’s fate. That’s another recollection of time.

It’s worth it to note that the fifth dimension is not the last dimension. Choice does not carry reality for you. Theoretical mathematicians say that there are eleven dimensions. If the plane of choice is the fifth, then the sixth one might be those strange moments we run into when we find ourselves making choices with other people.

And, no, it’s not called coincidence. We’re discussing the elusive path of making choices with other people right now. Instead of coincidence, I prefer the word solidarity.