Sugar Pellets

            This guy I know James was telling me about neuroplasticity and rats and how if they get trained to go through a maze for sugar pellet rewards they’ll keep going through the maze over and over and over again even if the sugar pellet rewards get replaced with pellets that make them puke.  So the poor rats keep going for the sugar pellets and getting puke pellets instead. 

            I think the experiment has something to do with the tenacity of habitual behavior.  I wonder if those rats ever clue into the fact that if they stopped running the maze, or stopped eating the pellets, they wouldn’t puke?  Maybe they come to like running the maze, or eating the puke pellets, or puking? 

            James really identifies with the rats and I do too.  I’ve spent years running mazes for sugar pellets only to get kicked in the head over and over.  The good news is, a) I’m not a rat, b) I’m not dead yet, c) I’ve left the maze, and d) I’m not going back one day at a time.

            So now it’s starting, or re-starting, or maybe it’s the encore, dessert, the new new thing, whatever.  Now it’s on.  Now I’ve got some time and space, I’m enjoying the time and space, to feel for life’s sweetness, to breathe in and out, to move around, explore, adjust.  To avoid what doesn’t serve and bathe in the gift of being human, alive, on this planet, at this time.  Here, now.  Yes.