my new bike will be back from the shop either cured of its creak or not
Not. But there's a story yet to play out involving the frame going back to the framebuilder. I'm hopeful it will have a happy ending.
Meanwhile here's Sam from GLOW, speaking his truth.
I've been replaying
this sadly cancelled series because it’s far less cognitively demanding to watch something we are familiar with than to watch something for the first time. She further links the phenomenon to the popular paradox of choice theory founded by psychologist Barry Schwartz. “When presented with multiple choices, it can overwhelm the brain and as a result, we are most likely to make no choice at all or to choose something that is safe and familiar, like your favourite TV series,” she explains.
Oh wait a minute, I seem to have accidentally cut and pasted from an article in
Vogue mid-sentence. Let's try again.
Humans don’t realise how much they cling to control until they lose it. This is why sudden events can traumatise us so much, such as losing a loved one or developing an illness (or having our brand new bike start creaking). There is the event itself, but then also what this event means to us and our fragile state of being. It’s the reminder that we’re not in control, that life doesn’t owe us anything, and anything could be taken from us. (Like quotes – in the case of almost this entire paragraph, from
symptomsofliving.com.) We don’t get to choose our future, as much as we’d like to think we can. We clutch at the small things in our control. We get to choose what we’ll watch; we’re in control of that. We use this control wisely and choose something familiar to us if only to pretend it was a matter of control in the first place.
Our instinct to turn to the same stories again and again is part of the human experience, says Shira Gabriel, a professor of psychology at the University at Buffalo who researches how watching TV shows can enhance feelings of belonging. Thanks,
Time, for snapping in the last piece of my personal jigsaw puzzle.
All that and I'm a sucker for an 80s soundtrack.
(And painfully cheesy lyrics, apparently. They may not stand scrutiny when captured in a screenshot, but
they perfectly score Ruth's face making the journey from happy to uncertain.)
