Life is More Than a Hamster Wheel

Our culture tells us the faster the better, and if fast is better, then faster must be even better. Well, unless you are a race car driver or a sprinter, fast is not always best. We all seem to sprint through life from one thing to another, oftentimes those things are good and noble, but amid that breakneck speed what we miss is the beauty of life. Faster and faster. Dizzying. Exhausting. Impossible to sustain. Round and round we go, like hamsters in a hamster wheel, but we don’t get anywhere. 

This quote by Eddie Cantor sums up what I am trying to say – Slow down and enjoy life. It’s not only the scenery you miss by going too fast – you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.”

Who is Eddie Cantor you might ask? He was a singer, comedian, vaudeville star, actor, and radio and television personality. Eddie got his start in show biz with the Ziegfeld Follies in New York City in 1917. Maybe as important, if not more important, Eddie was involved with The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, founded in 1938 by President Franklin Roosevelt, and that foundation’s main fundraising event was setting up booths at Christmas asking people to donate a dime to fight polio and other birth defects. From that, Eddie coined the term, The March of Dimes, and in 1976 the organization adopted March of Dimes as its name.

If you are like most people, you run faster and faster in the hamster wheel, then collapse into bed at night, only to get up tomorrow and start all over. Round and round.

I am not saying all of life is intended to be spent sitting in a rocking chair on the porch or in a beach chair at the ocean. What I am saying is look over all the things you do and ask yourself; “what things are most important things to me, and what stuff can I dump over the side of the boat.” Yes, there are times in your life when the pace is fast and you do fly around at high speed, often while juggling many balls, but even then, take time to enjoy the scenery as it whizzes by.

Since my stroke in 2021, due to some neurological deficits, I have been forced to both slow down and as much as possible, avoid situations that create unneeded chaos in my brain. One of the things I have fallen in love with is JOMO – the joy of missing out, disconnecting as a form of self-care.

I love the words of Jeremiah 2:25, as translated in the Message – “Slow down. Take a deep breath. What’s the hurry? Why wear yourself out? Just what are you after anyway? But you say, ‘I can’t help it. I’m addicted to alien gods. I can’t quit.’”

Life shouldn’t be about doing more. Instead, about doing what matters most. The apostle Paul gives us a powerful reminder of the value of time. We are to use our time wisely, making thoughtful choices about how we spend the limited time on earth we have. Here is what we read – “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15-16).

So, today, look to God for meaning and purpose, and don’t buy into the world’s roadmap of “faster and faster.” That roadmap is nothing more than a hamster wheel that just goes round and round.

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