If life was an amusement park, what ride are you on?
February 2015
Have you noticed that life, well, our emotional journey through life and to some extent the path to success is a bit like visiting an amusement park???
Using the amusement park as an analogy for life, while accepting that life is challenging; we are allowed and are supposed to have fun and find the things that make us happy! Visiting an amusement park is fun – whether we go as children or adults we get to do things that in the moment make us happy – we are released from the norm…
Amusement parks can also be a costly special treat but then life comes with a price too… For everything that we do and shouldn’t do,or on the flip side should do and do not, there is a cost – sometime tangible and sometimes intangible.
However it is not just the amusement park which is an analogy – the rides themselves can also be metaphors for where we find ourselves in life… metaphors for the repeating cycles in our lives…
My favourite ride is the roller coaster…The roller coaster starts off gentle and easy then comes the first arduous ascent, followed by the wild vertical loops that flip you upside down and leave you hanging for a few moments – designed to scare the living sh*t out of you, get your heart and adrenaline pumping… Then another accent; maybe not as high as the first, followed by sweeping horizontal loops which swing wildly left and then right at speed, then the corkscrew which exerting G-force on your body… then the really steep ascent, followed by the vertical drop which make you feel like you are in free-fall, where you feel that at any moment your stomach will eject through your mouth, then a few more loops, left, right and one more climb, then the last descent, before you’re finally into the home straight where the roller coaster comes gently to a standstill as the ride comes to its end. Not all roller coasters are fast and furious – but all are designed to thrill and exhilarate…
As we are fortunate to be living in a time where in theory at least we are born-free, life should be exhilarating for all of us – Life should challenge us, stretch us, scare us and take us on magical mystery adventures of self-discovery – showing us where our passions lie… Yet all too often, the conventional wisdom of the last century with its industrial age thinking – draws some of us if we are not careful onto the lesser rides – the safe rides – the merry-go-round – designed to make us dizzy and unable to coordinate ourselves, with that irritating music which distracts… The ferris-wheel, which gently takes us up to a great height through a gentle curve and once at the top we are given the panoramic view of what could be, only to bring us down again – a yo-yo effect of hope and disappointment… The Hall of Mirrors, where everything about us becomes distorted and misshapen to the point of grotesque – it’s meant to be funny and make us laugh at ourselves; but being in the Hall of Mirrors could be a metaphor for the way the negativity within is ever ready to show us a distorted and grotesque view of ourselves, or perhaps it is that distorte and grotesque presentation of self that we project into the world …and bumper cars … yes they are fun – but they don’t get us anywhere and by their very nature give us permission to be reckless, crashing and bumping into others with no thought for the consequences because there are rarely consequences when your in a bumper car…
Now don’t get me wrong – when I first entered into the amusement park of life, I did walk through the Hall of Mirror but I didn’t like it so I didn’t stay and I never went back and have battled with myself to get those vile self-images out of my mind. I also took a ride on the merry-go-round but that made me feel physically sick… I tried out the ferris-wheel, to see what could be mine, only to be brought down without achieving as much as I could and have played bumper-cars on more than one occasion … but after my first ride on the roller-coaster; I knew that was the best place for me… I love the thrill, the risk and the rush; roller-coasters let me know that I am alive… and when my days are ended I hope that I can look back in my final moments and say – wow; that was one heck of a ride!
So if life is a bit like an amusement park and the rides are a metaphor for where we find ourselves as we journey through life – where are you in the amusement park? What ride are you on and is that ride working to your advantage?