Thursday 11th October

The older I become the more I realise we are on a treadmill, repeating the same patterns of work and behaviour all our lives, and never really getting anywhere. Treading out the days, treading out the weeks and treading out the years.  It is partly the system in which we all seem to be trapped, like flies on flypaper, seemingly unable to gather the necessary strength to heave ourselves up and fly.  Largely though it is our own preference for the known, boring and predictable and treadmill though it might be, to the inherent dangers that might lie in the unknown.

I have found myself made redundant at least three times in what people call a career, but which has actually just been a series of jobs, and each time though full of dread and worry over how I would pay the rent or mortgage, I survived.  No, actually I thrived each time, and found I was actually happier in my new job where I had been pretty miserable before.

At least four times too, I have found myself with a disintegrating relationship falling apart in my hands, desperately trying to hold the broken pieces together and hoping for some glue to hold long enough to make the thing whole again.  Each time through despair and depression I came out the other end stronger, or at least able to try again.

But maybe even this series of relationships is my own treadmill too. Is human experience then one of constantly repeating the same mistakes, or do we actually learn anything other than how to place one foot in front of the other in order to keep the treadmill turning.  Maybe we do, but what do we do with this modicum of knowledge gleaned through experience. Because at the end we settle for a retirement which in itself becomes another, maybe less strenuous and more comfortable treadmill as we eke out our resources until at last we can stop treading and rest.