Hamster Wheel

I saw Serena’s mental wheel last month when we met at the café below her office. It had been difficult to meet during her internship in the law firm, but she spontaneously called me on a day her boss was away for a trial. I gladly came over.

We rendezvoused at 3 pm during her “lunch” break—at actual lunchtime she had to man the office alone while her colleagues were at a restaurant. I had already eaten, so I ordered dessert; she said she wasn’t hungry and ordered only a coffee.

“Will you be at Gregor’s party on Saturday?” I asked.

“Uhm… I’m not sure,” she said sheepishly. “Maybe I’ll swing by later if it doesn’t get too late.”

“Work?” I asked, focusing my attention on the strawberry cheesecake in front of me, instead of her. I didn’t want to make it feel like a confrontation, as Serena hates confrontations—actually, substitute hates with dislikes. Hate is too strong of a word when it comes to Serena.

She sighed. “We generally don’t go to the office on Saturday.” (I frowned. She had been in the office every single Saturday that month. I relaxed my forehead as quickly as possible.) “It’s just,” she continued, “before a busy week we sometimes go in to review the work, you know?”

“Of course.” I glanced at her. “Do you want to come to the party?” 

“Why, yes, of course I want to!” Serena said a bit too hurriedly. “I’ll really try to come. Please tell Gregor if you see him.”

“Right.” I paused, then decidedly met her eyes. “What I meant is that it’s okay if you don’t. You’ve been working so hard lately, it’s alright if you need an evening for yourself.” 

She was silent for a moment. “I could use a break,” she murmured.

That surprised me. It was uncharacteristic of her, even as a whispered comment. She didn’t linger on it as I wished, though. “I don’t want Gregor to resent me. I’ll pass by, for sure.”

At that moment, I peeked into Serena’s mind and saw the giant hamster wheel she was in. She was running in it—she had just sped up.

The first impulse was to tell her that it didn’t have to be this way, but I knew better than to do that. After all, all our friends were already telling her, yelling even, to just stop working for that damn law firm. They had also been asking her for years why was she studying law in the first place when she hated—sorry, disliked it so much.

I felt similarly but didn’t agree with their approach. I tried something different: mostly, to listen more and hold back my opinions. I wasn’t always successful, but, after a while, I started seeing it, just like then.

I was standing in that mental place of sorts, in front of the human-sized hamster wheel Serena was running in. I was holding my plate of cake. I ate a spoonful, observing.

“I just—ah—I’ll do some more work the coming days—aahh—so that on Saturday I can be done earlier—gaahh—and come to the party.” Sweat dripped down her face.  

I chewed on my dessert, thinking. What do you say to a person running in circles that fast? I wanted to show Serena that she could step down, but she would have already done so if she had known. It’s not like it’s fun having to run like that.

Because you have to run when you’re in the hamster wheel, which was what our friends didn’t get. You can’t tell a person to just stop: the wheel will continue to rotate. Whoever decides to abruptly halt risks to be whirled around until they’re broken into pieces.

And, I can tell you, you’re very aware of that possibility when you are in the wheel.

“You’ll need to work more than what you already do,” I said. “Is that physically possible?”

She grimaced. “I—ahhh—I can try—” she accelerated.

Alright. I wanted her to slow down, but couldn’t help her from here, so I put down my cake. I closed up, until I was standing right next to her wheel, and looked closely at her pacing and at the gyrating monstrosity she was in. 

I skipped in place a couple of times. Then, I jumped.

I landed next to her in the wheel and immediately started to run. I nearly lost my footing, but managed to find a rhythm—it wasn’t my first time. Serena kept on running beside me, barely aware of my presence. 

The speed was bearable, but sure to wear anyone down in the long run. “You don’t want to disappoint Gregor, but you also don’t want to disappoint your boss. Right?” 

She frowned. “Well… yeah.”

Okay, I was already panting. “It must be exhausting, trying to keep everyone happy.” And I knew that it wasn’t only her boss and her friends that she had to handle. It was her mother who had given her the option to either become a doctor or a lawyer.

She turned to me, realizing I was with her. Or trying, at least. “You could say that.” I felt the wheel slowing down a bit. 

“I just worry that you’ll reach your limits,” I told her. “You can’t keep this going without breaking.”

“Oh dear, no! Don’t worry about me.” She smiled. “I’ll be alright.”  

I was back at the café, sitting in front of a half-eaten strawberry cheesecake and a smiling Serena. 

The wheel had slowed down, I reckoned, but she was still in it. I was frustrated by the way she had cut me out, redirecting my comment instead of addressing her exhaustion. Well, it’s a lot to unpack during a lunch break.

“Enough about me,” Serena said. “What about you? How’s your aunt doing?” 

It was my turn to grimace. “Driving my parents mad, as per usual,” I said, with a bit more vehemence than intended. Serena knew my aunt had been an issue lately, and the fact that she remembered was sweet, but I was still annoyed at the change of topic. I went with it anyway. “Last night she called them at 3 am, asking for help to clean her freezer. She switched off the thing at 10 in the evening, but didn’t get out the ice before it melted—she ended up with her kitchen half inundated.”

“Oh God.”

“It was nothing too serious. My dad told her he would pass by first thing in the morning.”

“And?”

“She talked to my mom and guilted her into coming right away.”

I should be more empathetic towards my aunt, but it’s tough. She is an old, lonely, unhappy woman, who complains about how lonely and unhappy she is. The problem is, that spending time with her doesn’t make her more amenable. When I meet her, she monologues about how my parents never pass by to say hi (they visit her at least twice a week) and how they forced her to move to this town she detests (before she complained she was living too far away from us). I’m told she talks similarly about me to others.

“Why would she do that?” asked Serena.

“She wants attention,” I said sadly. My aunt made me sadder than angry. Her hamster wheel was of such proportions that I couldn’t stand even imagining it.

I looked at Serena. I still kind of wanted to address her issues, but I knew I couldn’t bring up work again. But, maybe, I could do something different. 

Something more… honest.

“She scares me,” I said slowly, picking at the cake. “Not in a threatening way. It’s more… I’m scared to become like her.”

Serena tilted her head to the side, waiting for me to continue.

“My aunt can’t accept that she is lonely because she’s driving people away—it’s easier for her to think that people are being mean. She is so trapped in her way of thinking that she can’t see a way out. And she is old now… I wonder if she can even change, at this point. It terrifies me.”

Serena frowned slightly. “It terrifies you that she can’t change?”

“The possibility of it.” I took a breath in, knowing what was about to happen. “Because if it can happen to her, it can happen to me.”

And I plopped into my wheel and started running. I mentally stumbled and cursed—I knew it was coming, but still, it’s an unpleasant feeling. 

“To you?” Serena’s voice came from somewhere beside me. I couldn’t see her because when you’re in the hamster wheel it feels like only the hamster wheel exists. “But you’re so different from her.”

Dismissive, I couldn’t help but think. She wasn’t acknowledging my fear: she was setting it aside.

“You would never call your parents in the middle of the night to fix a mess you made,” she continued. She was more direct now that we were talking about me, instead of her. “You’re attentive and self-reflective. I don’t see how you’d end up like her. You shouldn’t be scared of it.”

“This fear of yours is dumb”. I knew she didn’t mean it—or maybe she did. I felt my wheel speed up.

“Maybe I am attentive and self-reflective because I’m scared of ending up like her,” I countered. “I get your point, but it doesn’t work. My fear has a reason.” I continued running.

See? I wanted to tell her. This is as frustrating as it is to watch you running in circles in your head. I wanted her to understand that she didn’t have to appease everyone—an impossible task that would only make her miserable—and that leaving the firm or law altogether didn’t have to be the end of her life, despite of what her mother said. Well, she could keep on working there if she wanted—but did she? I couldn’t tell if she even knew. 

Either way, she believed she had to do it all or she would lose everything. I wanted so badly to show her all for what it was: a belief.

Instead, I showed her my hamster wheel. I felt vulnerable. Would she get it? Or would she disregard it?

That’s when she landed next to me and started running with me.

“What is the reason for your fear?” she asked.

I sighed in relief. “It keeps me questioning myself, I guess. It asks if I’m stuck, and what I can do to unstuck myself.”

“Mhm. And what is the problem of being stuck?”

I faltered. “Well, it’s being stuck. That’s bad.” I could tell my answer was simplistic. “It limits you and should be avoided.”

“Can it can be avoided?”

“Well, yes. It must be.” I vaguely realized that I was slightly slowing down. “Right?”

“I don’t know.” Serena looked pensive. “Maybe we’re bound to be stuck in our head every once in a while. It’s just human.”

“I suppose the human condition is suffering, so that checks out.”

She laughed, then got serious again. “Think about it, though. The only way we can realize something is wrong is by hitting a wall again and again. Being stuck isn’t good nor bad: it’s just a signal that something needs to be changed.” 

I mulled over her point. We were walking now.

“But how can I know,” I found myself asking, “that the signals will be strong enough to be perceived, and the person perceptive enough to notice them?”

We were back at the café. 

“That’s the question.” Serena took a bite from my cake. “You have to trust that life will make the signs apparent enough, I guess. But people can work on being more perceptive. Most tend to look away, it’s just natural—but you’re putting in effort, I’d say. Trust yourself.” 

“Right,” I said, without meaning it. Easy to say “trust yourself”, I thought, when the issue is that I wired myself exactly not to do that. 

My aunt trusted her perception of things, and look what it brought to her. 

At the same time, I couldn’t just ignore Serena’s answer. There was truth in it, I felt it. To think that I could be in complete control of my mind and obtain an absolute objective perspective of my life was ludicrous. A perspective is, at its core, subjective. 

So, what do you do when you can’t fully control something? You do what you can—and then you let go. Trust, if you will.

I observed Serena as she absentmindedly finished my cake. Weirdly, it didn’t bother me: she must have been hungry, skipping lunch and all. It warmed me the fact that she felt that comfortable around me. Something clenched my throat as I looked at her, and deep within me I felt the need to reach out, to shake her, to embrace her, to do something.

I sat still instead. I wish to trust you, I thought. Please, show me I can trust you. 

We chatted a bit more, about simpler things. Then, we parted ways.