Patterns

My cat likes to do the same things at the same time, day in and day out.

Get up, eat, nap, eat, nap more; eat, sleep at night; get up in the middle of the night for (imaginary) hunting, then sleep more. Morning and it starts over again.

I understand that  this desire for consistency and routine is very common in cats. If you disrupt their schedule, they resent it. They do well with structured lives.

People like patterns too. We actually do better with structure and patterns in our lives. We like to know when dinner will be; that annual events that we’ve liked before will be there for us to like again.

We do well when we know what to expect. When we don’t know what to expect, we often make up stories. Sometimes the stories are about what might happen and sometimes they’re about something difficult that might happen and what we would do in that case.

Sometimes patterns we used to experience still linger in memories for us – like memories of going back to school in the Fall or staying up late during long days of Summer. Sometimes patterns of how we were treated earlier in our lives influence how we respond to things now.

No matter what, patterns are familiar and many of them, like annual holidays; getting together with friends and family, cheering on the team when the season starts, are comforting.

Sometimes patterns we used to have, like long talks with old friends, are no longer possible for us. When that happens, we may, like my cat, resent it. We may get cranky or lonely or sad.

We need to create some new structure somehow to help ourselves feel better. It works. (I’m not saying you need to get a cat!)

What do you think?