Spinning Wheels

What If Nobody Else Is Even in the Room?

The Parachute is not only for conversations.

You can hear upsetting news, read something, receive an email, remember something, or simply notice that your own thoughts have started circling.

You may not know what you feel yet.

You may not know what it means.

You may not be able to do anything about it right now.

And still your brain keeps trying.

Sometimes the cord is noticing: Thinking harder is not giving me anything new.

Jenny was just trying to buy groceries

There was nobody standing across from Jenny having an argument.

Nobody was asking her for an answer.

Nobody was waiting for her to explain herself.

Jenny was picking up groceries when she heard deeply upsetting news on the radio.

And her brain went to work.

What did she think about it?

What did it mean?

What was going to happen?

Was there anything she should do?

Those are not bad questions.

Thinking is useful.

Processing is useful.

Sometimes we really do need time to turn something over and understand what we think.

But by the time Jenny finished with the groceries, something had changed.

She was tired.

And she could tell she was no longer getting anywhere new.

Same subject.

Same thoughts.

Another lap.

Her wheels were spinning.

And then there was Sassy

Jenny normally took Sassy to the pet store either before or after groceries.

They would walk around, meet people, practice training, do tricks, and have some fun.

It was ordinary.

It was familiar.

It was part of their life together.

And on this particular day, Jenny did not feel like going in.

That matters.

This was not Jenny feeling terrible and suddenly thinking, Wonderful! I shall now joyfully practice self-regulation at the pet store. 😂

She did not feel like it.

But standing there, Jenny noticed something:

Continuing to think about this is not helping me understand it, decide how I feel, or discover anything useful I can do.

Processing had stopped moving.

More thinking had become more circling.

So Jenny tried something.

She stopped requiring herself to produce an answer.

And she went into the pet store with Sassy.

Nothing was solved

The news did not matter less because Jenny walked through the pet-store doors.

She did not decide everything was fine.

She did not replace a difficult thing with a happy dog and call the problem fixed.

The thing she had heard was still true.

But so was Sassy.

So were the aisles.

So was training.

So were the people they might meet.

So was the rest of the day.

Jenny let more of the landscape back into view.

And for a while, she stopped asking her brain to solve something it was no longer solving.

The experiment was not “go to a pet store”

This is where borrowed belief gets interesting.

Another Traveler might hear Jenny's story and think:

Yes. I know exactly what she means. I have a place/activity like that.

Someone else might think:

A PET STORE? When I am overwhelmed? Absolutely not. That sounds like fluorescent-light chaos. 😂

Excellent.

That is information too.

Jenny's experiment does not become your assignment.

It simply offers evidence that when thinking has stopped producing anything new, a Traveler might be allowed to stop demanding an answer for a while.

You do not have to choose the “best” thing.

You are collecting ingredients.

Sometimes the Parachute is permission

Jenny did eventually return to thinking about the news.

She had not abandoned the subject.

She had interrupted the idea that she needed to finish processing it right then.

That became another piece of her Parachute process:

I can care about something deeply without requiring myself to think about it every second.

Maybe that sentence fits you.

Maybe it does not.

Maybe your version is completely different.

Keep whichever ingredient catches the light.

The cord is still yours.