Settled into a Rut

Everyday Spirituality is about experiencing the divine in the mundane and seeing lessons where problems are apparent.

Even with things like my desk chair.

It sits on a plastic carpet protector that is meant not only to protect the plush carpet but to allow me to move the chair easily.

But as time goes on and I sit in my chair day after day, something happens. My weight presses the chair wheels downward until the plastic (normally flat and unyielding) sinks into concave shapes, as though a golf club had cut four divots.

When that happens, I can no longer shift my chair—at all. I can’t move closer to the computer, nor to the left to open a desk drawer, nor to the rear to more easily leave the workstation. I am as fixed as if the chair were nailed to the floor, never mind the wheels and plastic surface meant to keep me mobile.

The only solution is to wrestle my way out, grasp the chair and force it—like pulling false teeth out of taffy—out of the divots. The heavy chair clearly longs to fall back into the ruts, but I wrangle with it to shove the wheels away from the grooves and onto hard, flat surfaces where the chair and protector can both perform as intended.

It forces me to wonder how many areas of life are just like that: where we have settled into ruts that will fight to keep us stuck.