THE LOOP

 

A while back, I read a book called ‘The Loop’ by Dan Sanders. It was quite an interesting book about this alcoholic man, Alan, trapped in a surreal cycle confined in a pine forest in which he has to follow a straight line and any attempt to deviate from it triggers a blackout and he has to begin again. As he goes through that, he relives certain moments in his life like his mother’s death, his father’s abuse and other experiences. Now when you read it the first time, it’s kind of eerie and confusing. Like why is he in a pine forest? Why does he have to stay in the straight path? Why does he keep on blacking out and reliving the traumatic experiences? I never really understood the theme of the book and why all that was going on until I realised I was stuck in a loop. The pine forest according to Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’ represents fate. So it’s like whenever Alan deviated from the path, his blackouts would sort of reinforce the loop and so he was stuck in the cycle reliving all his suppressed memories.

Many times, it’s hard for one to notice they’re stuck in a loop. The most common example of being in a loop is feeling emotional stagnation where your emotions become numb or you feel disconnected and enable repetitive behaviour. I realised I was in a constant cycle when I kept allowing my past guys back into my life. When you’re in the emotional loop you get used to a certain emotion like the pain and hurting people cause you so when you actually find someone who makes you happy, you self-sabotage and deviate back into the cycle of pain. Repeatedly reconnecting with exes or failed talking stages, or even toxic friends causes an emotional turmoil and constant heartbreak. It strains your relationships with other people who are actually good for you. The questions I ask myself is why am I caught in a constant cycle? Why am I comfortable in this pine forest reliving past traumas? Does this mean I hate happiness?

One of the reasons of being caught in a constant cycle is because of a pattern of negative thinking and fear. When you’re constantly feeding your mind negative thoughts, you resort to self-sabotage and hinder your own happiness or success. Reinforced negative thoughts makes you comfortable with pain causing the cycle you can’t deviate from.

Being in a loop isn’t necessarily confined to emotions and relationships. It can be career stagnation where you feel like you’re stuck in a dead-end job or academic stagnation where you’re staying in your comfort zone of getting average grades. It’s very easy to feel like you’re not going anywhere in life. You feel like each day is the same and there’s nothing more to life because of this loop you’ve created. It’s like a labyrinth in your mind.

I think it’s possible to be stuck in multiple loops at once. Let me paint a picture; so imagine you’re this student, you get average grades and you have a part-time job and you’re in a relationship. In your school, you’re in this comfort of being an average student so your routine becomes the same and you don’t put in extra effort to do better. In your job, you feel like it’s a dead-end and you’re stuck in the same position doing the same thing each day you go in. In your relationship, you’re constantly having arguments, breaking up and making up, it starts to feel comfortable. Like Alan from the book, you get trapped in a cycle of pain and regret.

Someone once said, ‘You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one’. You are not stuck, you are just repeating the same pattern. You’re in a familiar unfulfilling pattern and you need to learn to break away from it. You need to identify your regular patterns, thoughts and behaviours. The same patterns and same mistakes won’t take you anywhere, they just keep you in the loop. Until you confront your trauma, it will continue to repeat itself until you feel lost and alone. Maya Angelou said, ‘we are trapped in a maze of our own design’. It’s all up to you to change your mind set and break out of that cycle because your thoughts are what creates your reality and your loops.