How I got the name Pi

It all started with vision. There was once a girl who watched people push. She would watch them push themselves so hard to sheer exhaustion and sometimes even hurt their backs. Day after day, the child would watch the same pattern unfold, asking, “Why do we push so hard?”

My vision begins at the very start, in a distant age—when people lived in caves, and saber-tooth tigers roamed the wilderness.

People had wheels back then, but they didn’t look like ours do today. They were square. They were perfect. They were straight. Each day, people pushed the carts with these square wheels across the field.

As time passed, the little girl was eventually sent to school to learn how to make those square wheels. While it came so easily to the others, it was a struggle for her. No matter how hard she tried, she could never carve a straight line. Always round. Always crooked. Always off.

Frustrated and embarrassed, she went up to the top of the mountain. Far away from the village to find some peace in the solitude.

Night fell, and the full moon rose. When she looked at the moon, she knew. The answer came to her.

She grabbed a stone and started carving. No longer trying to make the straight edges, she let herself be natural. Let the curvy line emerge. Cut after cut, the wheel began to emerge.

And just as it began to form the shape of the moon, the wheel slipped out of her hands and started rolling down the mountain. She ran after it and eventually jumped on top of it. Riding it all the way through the village.

As it rolled by, the villagers watched in awe. It caused them to stop for a moment and look at the square wheels. They thought to themselves, “Why have we been pushing so hard?”

She became the girl who invented the wheel, returning throughout history whenever people felt boxed in. Each time, she would reinvent the wheel to remind them of her message.

My name is Pi. It’s not the name I was born with, but a nickname. You see, I had some friends in high school. They have fun nicknames too. I needed something. Something good, but what?

I am what they now call neurodivergent or autistic. I think in pictures and patterns. I see a full spectrum of things. But at the time I didn’t have these words, so I just called it odd. Out of place. Weird.

I had many interests at the time: art, filmmaking, fashion design, dance, math, writing, and much more. Although it felt natural for me to have this kind of diversity, it seemed to be a problem for others. I was often told to focus. To pick one thing. To rein it in.

Doing so always puts me in a box.

The problem with boxes is that, like those square wheels, boxes don’t move naturally. They get stuck and require pushing. They cut off the connections that allow things to roll naturally.

We aren’t just interested in things for no reason. There are always connections. My art and my writing influence each other. They are meant to coexist together. Cutting one off hurts the other.

As I searched for a nickname, I kept thinking back to my vision. I felt a lot like that girl, and I was into math. The number Pi also spoke to me. I saw myself in its nature. The number includes all the numbers. It doesn’t have to go in any order. It is free to be itself. And yet, it is not chaotic. It creates balanced, whole circles.

A circle is a different kind of focus than a box or a square wheel. On the outside, all of my interests can coexist. But they are not chaotic. Each is connected to a common center. That center is a purpose or a mission.

When we are aligned to our center, the rest of our lives can unfold naturally. All of our interests have a place on the wheel—moving smoothly, not forced. We aren’t cut off from parts of ourselves. That creates a sense of flow. There’s no need to push anymore because the center holds all the other elements in place. Our lives unfold more naturally.

The metaphor of the name Pi resonated, so I took it as a nickname. Then something interesting happened. I took on not only a name but a way of life.

No matter what I do, I always do it the same way. Breaking down boxes. Bending straight lines. Breaking things into smaller pieces and then bringing those pieces together. In art, I cut paper into a million little pieces and transform that chaos into order. Connecting the dots. Finding unity against the divides. Weaving stories and metaphors throughout.

My life has been a journey of being put into boxes, then breaking out of them. I'll share more about that in future stories. For now, I see many boxes—not just in my life, but everywhere. And I ask the question once more: Why are we pushing so hard?