The Hand-Feet of a Hamster

Talked to a friend today who was having a tough time with a cyclical issue that consistantly returns surrounding her career.  A huge amount of work spent towards an overwhelming accomplishment that she succeeds to pull off while those surrounding her tend to get the credit and the reward.  When something is so cyclical and recurring there is no denying that you are creating it, that you in some way have decided that this is how it will be and until you understand the crappy agreement you have allowed yourself to settle for, the contract you have made with yourself to say… ‘Yes, this is how it’ll be for me… I’ll take it.’  You will continue to succeed at fulfilling this unconsciously accepted goal.  You may not want it or like it in any manner and wish so desperately for it to be different, but that is irrelevant as you have scarred yourself with this subconscious tattoo that will continue to live on inside of you.The conversation started with that customary greeting of ‘how’s it going’ and was responded to with that response that we tend to hear so often.  

“Same shit.”

A few reaffirming sentences validate the commraderie of living in that state.  

“Same shit, just a different pile” as another friend said to me the previous day.  Somehow that quickly stimulated something along the lines of… “Like a hamster on a treadmill.”  And then it hit me.

The feet of a hamster seem more like hands, don’t they?  Kind of?  The hamsters I remember holding years ago seemed to have long, lanky toes that were more like stiff little fingers.  I started imaging those little hand-feet (we’ll call them) having to grab onto whatever it was that they were walking on, with every step.  Then I began to realize that those spinning wheels that they run on are not your average treadmill, as they are generally constructed with lots of cross bars instead of a flat surface.  A human running on a treadmill just clomps along, thoughtlessly pounding upon the spinning surface, but for a hamster it’s not so simple.  They don’t have big flat soles pushing the bars of their treadmill, but instead their little hand-feet have to grab onto each passing bar with meticuluous precision again and again and again without allowing their legs to fall between the cracks.  And those bars are generally not moving slowly, usually you can feel the winds a few feet from the cage.  Not only that, but the bars are passing within an inch of their eyes, distorting and blurring anything in front of them.  It’s an extremely demanding task on the hamster’s entire being…  imagine it… It’s like if you were forced to cross a mile long river hanging from monkey bars that were actually train tracks and the train was just behind you forcing you to travel at the speed of an amphetamine.

Grab… grab… grab… grab, grab, grab, grabgrabgrabGRABGRABGRABGRABGRABGRABGRABGRABGRAB…  and you can’t see shit, but you don’t feel safe closing your eyes.  Focus, focus, focus… the world is spinning in front of you, precision grabs, don’t slip, don’t let up or you’re fucked… and… whew… nice one.  Let’s go stick our nose on this metal ball over here so some water can spill on my face and I’ll try to swallow a bit of it before it gets dried up by the chemically-manufactured bits of crap they’ve covered my floor with making it so I can’t see where to avoid walking on all the shit I’ve made over the past four days since they last cleaned my cage.

I think these hamsters may not be getting the credit they really deserve.  Honestly, at the end of the day, how often do you hear people commending hamsters for what they go through?  But then again, at the end of the day… they are just hamsters.