Your Treadmill Life

“I swear, I don’t owe you or anyone an explanation of my life!” Karrella quarreled with Violet.

“All I want to know is what are you doing right? I am more educated than you. I came to this country with a bachelor’s degree. You came with a high school diploma,” Violet states.

Sighing, unconsciously swaying her head to the window, staring into the huge oak tree, as birds frolic from branch to branch. Listening to them chirping and other birds cooing, her instincts alert, ‘it’s envy.’ Only the truth beats envy. Smiling, turning back to her cousin, she lit a fire under her memory, “In our native country, connections or links would allow you to start at the top with your degree and me at the bottom with no college degree.”

“If I knew that I would be pushed to the bottom with everyone, I wouldn’t have come here,” her regrets spoke.

“No one with sense starts at the top Vie,” she explained.

“Sorry, but I don’t like the bottom!” Violet throws at her.

“In America, all of us, degree or not, start at the bottom and work our way up.”

“I had a head start on you. I had the experience too. I haven’t moved from where I am while you are miles ahead of me,” she rants.

“In this country, you don’t live life on your own terms. You live on the American terms until you are strong, smarter, and fit enough to live life on your terms,” her cousin informs her.

“So, you are saying I fail because I refuse to adapt?”

“Why is it, that when you don’t get your way in every situation you are in, you believe you failed,” Karrella points out to her.

“You are living your life, your way,” she points out.

“You want success and everything else on your terms. Our way of life and living doesn’t fit in here. You must adapt first to a new and uncomfortable system. Find a way to combine both ways of living. Then choose the best way that fits what you want,” Karrella educates.

“I went back to college to get my master’s degree, and you are still behind me but doing better than me!”

“Get off the treadmill girl!” Karrella screamed.

“I am not on a treadmill!” she fires back.

“You do everything your way. At your speed. Your time. You let no new idea or suggestion in. Your life is like a treadmill. You go at your speed and time, and still end up nowhere!”

“You are saying I should go with the flow?”

“I am saying balance needs to play its part. You just keep taking from life. You give back nothing!” Karrella throws at her.

She stares at her cousin, as the truth battles with reality. Karrella goes on, “We know no one in a position of power here to pull strings for us. So we must charter our own course. Make our own footprints in the sands of time. Fight our own battles and challenges,” Karrella educates her.

“I know that,” she disputes.

“And do you know to do that, we must do many things we don’t want to do before we can do what we want? I did a lot of that because I understand the system and how things work in this country. Wealth and success don’t sit on a master’s degree in America. It sits on a simple and or brilliant idea, a thought, a different way of doing things, common sense, something unique and different. That’s what makes America great, success doesn’t sit on one thing.”

Violet eyes and mouth popped, and she gulped down her shock and said, “Damn you right.”

“Know your world, that’s the only way you are going to survive in it!”

Many of us keep comparing our lives with others, unaware that knowledge of your world and the people in it, is one of the first steps towards success. Success doesn’t only sit on education. It also sits on knowledge of everything you need to know and many things you don’t need to know, yet!

If your heart could speak, what would it say?

Don’t put your life on a treadmill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uPtmePu6mA&t=60s