this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2025
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It's nice seeing my parents but everything else in my hometown is depressing.
The things that have changed are depressing because they represent lost youth. But, the things that stayed the same are also depressing, because it means the same bunch of people just spent 30 years on a treadmill and got nowhere.
Spending 30 years doing the same thing doesnt mean they weren't happy. Thats quite an assumption to make.
You’re the one that made an assumption. I said nothing about whether I thought they were happy. If you’re going to moralise at people for jumping to conclusions, you could at least base it on something they actually said.
Then let me take a crack at it. You are subtly moralizing against their lives as going 'nowhere,' suggesting that there is a 'somewhere' to go, that would be better than having remained. The reality is you are also on the treadmill, and cannot leave it. You have run faster than it has turned under you, and feel like moving closer to the front of the belt has given your life meaning, just as they have continued to run with their family and friends in a familiar constellation around them and taken meaning from that, but your fate, just like theirs, is to fall and be thrown off the back of the treadmill with everyone else.
"30 years on a treadmill and got nowhere" definitely has a negative connotation.
It's negative, yeah, but that's not the same thing either. I can't believe I'm having to defend the position that not changing at all in 30 years could be seen as anything less than ideal. Did I touch a nerve or something?
I'm not the one who responded, just saying it's pretty easy for someone to get the impression that you think someone stuck on a depressing treadmill might be sad.
It's not the huge leap you seem to think it is from what you said.