Spinning Wheels

Sometimes, I think that routine more than fear of change is what keeps people on the same spinning wheel.

I’ve been thinking about that recently and dug back in the old memory archives for something that would give me a visual of this thought. I finally found the one memory that allowed me to play this out; with what resolution I am not sure, but something must be decided.

Growing up a few of my friends had hamsters and a couple of them had the spinning wheel in the cage. I remember sitting on my friend Hope’s bed watching her hamster Ben running and spinning the wheel and thinking, after I got over the fascination of it, that it looked kind of dull and definitely tiring.

Hope added a few other “fun” things for the hamster to do but after an awful lot of sniffing and running back and forth, Ben would always go back to the spinning wheel. Why? Was it was easy and he didn’t have to learn anything new or maybe because the new “fun” toys really weren’t that much fun? Hope did spend a lot of time trying to get him to try the new things and even took the wheel out of the cage. Ben sat like a lump until the wheel was returned.

Perhaps her rewards system was weak or maybe Ben was just a creature of habit. I do know that there are a lot of “hamsters” aka people out there on the old spinning wheel and I wonder what keeps them there. Is it routine or fear or is routine fear?

It is a question without a clear answer today because I am mulling over my own routines and feeling rather snarly about them at the moment. Why? Because, I have some routines that aren’t leading me anywhere yet I find them comforting. I stood looking out the window, sipping a cup of tea and thinking, “hmmm, this isn’t going anywhere and I think I am wasting time, big time, and that is not good”.

So for today, routine is on my mind and I need to make some hard, fast decisions about these routines because I “fear” they have me on a spinning wheel and I have never liked things that spun.