The Conveyor Belt of Life

At the beginning of my journey with chronic illness, I coined the phrase ‘conveyor belt of life’. I thought of it when my life was derailed by traumatic events and chronic illness.

What is it?

Of course, a conveyor belt travels some distance while people or machines place objects on it. All of these objects then travel on the same path and end up in the same place. Once the belt reaches its destination, it loops back to the start and the cycle repeats itself.

Unlike a conveyor belt, one person’s version of the ideal life trajectory will invariably be very different from another’s. One size doesn’t fit all.

The conveyor belt of life’ is exactly what it sounds like: it’s the idea that we are brought up to live out a defined life path. Most of us start on that path and I wonder how many of us go a different way, voluntarily or involuntarily.

The paradigm shift

As early as I can remember, my life plan looked something like this: attend school (elementary, middle, and high), make friends and get good grades. Next, I was expected to go to college, make new friends and get more good grades. After graduating, I would secure a high-paying job. After that, I would get married and have 2.50 kids. Eventually, I would retire and fade off into the sunset. Of course, there are joyful things in this version of life that include friends, vacations, love, and hobbies. I’m sure that this original idea of life sounds familiar, if not exactly what you once also believed to be true.

As I will describe below, a series of events completely destroyed this fantasized version of my life. It felt as if I had broken the fourth wall in a film and began to see everything behind the screen. Once life threw me off the belt, only then was I able to look at where I had been and see it for what it truly was: a life where my goals were defined by society, parents, peers. etc. My success and fulfullment was being driven by external forces instead of internal ones.

The realization

Around midway through high school, I internalized the ‘conveyor belt of life’ concept. Chronic illness was preventing me from attending class and the real potential of not graduating changed me. I had fallen off the belt, was shaken and thrust into some kind of alternate reality.

I was told while growing up that high school “dropouts” are failures, and graduating high school alone wouldn’t be enough to have a full life; I needed to go to college. Well, I had become everything I feared. I knew I could never live out the life I saw for myself. The life my friends were still living…on that conveyor belt of life.

I recall being forced into therapy, where I would tell the therapists multiple times about the conveyor belt. Unfortunately, the reaction I got was less than understanding. I was grappling with the meaning of life and realized that I’d been living a superficial one. Some of the therapists tried to understand, but none of them could. All of their goals and therapeutic interventions were aligned with getting me back on the belt, using techniques that were generic and not tailored to my needs. Though my first reaction was to find my way back onto the belt, it became clear that for my own well-being, I needed to stay off the belt and plot my own course.

Flaws in the system

The biggest flaw with the conveyor belt is that everyone is expected to follow a similar path. It doesn’t allow for differences in upbringing or the way our unique brains work. Essentially, people are meant to function in the same ways and work within the prescribed educational, societal, and workspace structures that have existed for years. For example, someone with a form of autism that doesn’t present overtly will face an uphill battle when attempting to live on the ‘conveyor belt’ of life; that is what happened to me.

Not only are people meant to function in specific ways, but they are expected to. Everyone around me (including teachers, school administrators, therapists, and physicians) was trying to get me back on the belt. During a recent conversation with one of my therapists, we discussed how difficult it was to do things like going to school or leaving my room. I shared how the people around me were trying to make me do those things. They told me that I was being disobedient, rigid, and not wanting to get better. My therapist responded by saying, “Who was the rigid one?”.

Up until that moment I had been blaming myself for being ‘the problem’ in the past; when in reality, I was struggling intensely and I physically could not do things the ‘normal way’. The ‘professionals’ around me were the rigid ones; determined to ‘put me back on track’ and to do things their way; challenging the status quo is not easily accepted by the ones maintaining it.

What life looks like off the conveyor belt

Now that I’m untethered from the belt, my daily goal is to be present and to find joy in everything I do. In order to fulfill my life’s purpose of helping others, I’m pursuing my education and have given up the primary motivation of good grades. Life offers so many lessons and I will continue to seek knowledge outside the classroom too. Another goal is to make deep and honest connections with other people. I would also love to find as much time as possible to experience the beauty of life, including experiencing other cultures, nature, art, and love. I will prioritize my health, happiness, and well-being over almost everything else.

This version of life is centered around inner success, power, and fulfillment. Though I’ve only summarized some of my desires and goals, this hopefully provides you with an outline of what life outside of the conveyor belt looks like. It’s flexible, unstructured and changes as my needs change. It’s not placed under the unwritten laws of what an average life ‘should’ look like

If you suffer from any kind of chronic illness, it’s likely that people will, and probably have, tried to fit you back onto the belt. It’s awful and scary, when you are made to feel like you are not living your life the right way.

You Do Not need to go back on the belt!

Take care of yourself and try to see how being off the conveyor belt can be a gift in disguise.

Thank you for taking the time to hear me out about this concept,

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