I couldn't resist this after reading an article which centred around this subject by one of my favourite columnists and writers.
In the column, he discusses the novel Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh
Full disclosure, I've never read this, although I understand the premise of the story.
In the story, there is a hero called Paul Pennyfeather, who suffers a series of unfortunate events, none really of his own making, but he ends up in jail and completely ruined.
In a conversation with another character, Professor Otto Silenus. The professor explains to him how life is very similar to that of a fairground ride called the Devil's Wheel.
In essence, the devil's wheel is a circulating roundabout at an angle where people try to clamour from the outside to the inside, and carnage ensues. People are thrown around everywhere into each other in the quest to get to the centre, much screaming, much chaos, much nonsense, no one ever really able to get from the circumference to the centre point.
Generally, the management positions someone in the centre point or someone who has the skill to get there to act as a lure, or bait, so that people keep coming, thinking that they can get there.
In the novel, Paul Pennyfeather cannot understand why this is an analogy for life, but it is explained by Silenus that, generally speaking, most people exist at the circumference of the devil's wheel. Caught up in the carnage, unable to reach the peace of the centre.
This analogy can be added to many aspects of life or to many aspects of the life that we live, but more and more in society, and even broken down into our own dental world, it seems that everybody is battling at the edges, falling over each other in chaos and carnage, unable to make any progress towards the peace of the middle.
The objective must be to get to the middle or to try to get to the middle, never to have a battle around the edges, never to listen to all the noise and the carnage, the FOMO. To stop doom scrolling and stop the algorithm dictating our lives, and to understand that we are generally so lucky that we have the opportunity just to run in our own lane, doing the thing that we want to do to the best of our ability and enjoying what happens when we do.
It really struck a chord, this. More and more, I want to be in the middle. In my own peace, in my own place, I can see the people on the outside falling over each other, but at least now, no longer do I feel like I want to be one of them.
Blog Post Number - 4446