Grey's Anatomy's Wheel of Samsara

I’ve been watching way too much Grey’s Anatomy. It’s almost painful.

These people run the same circles again and again, like they’re locked in some emotional roundabout with no exit. Same problems. Same fixes that never fix anything. After a while I’m sitting there annoyed, but also weirdly aware of how familiar it all feels outside the screen.

What gets me is how common this is in real life. We all cycle through our stuff. We think we’ve outgrown something, then it shows up again wearing a new face. I keep coming back to this idea of life spiraling upward. You see the same scenery, but you’re standing on a higher ledge. The view shifts. The moment shifts. You’re still in the same place, but not quite.

But in the show, the spiral barely moves. The growth is so slow you almost miss it. It’s the same mistake in different scrubs. And sure, drama is what keeps the story alive. Still, I can’t help noticing how often people in real life do the same thing. And I’ll speak for myself here. I’ve seen people get so tangled in their own drama that the drama becomes a comfort. Not because they love it, but because they don’t know where else to go. They haven’t had the time. They haven’t had the resources. They haven’t had the luck. So they stay in the loops they understand.

Meredith and McDreamy are the perfect example. I want you. I don’t. Come close. Go away. I’m on season 4 right now and Meredith is only starting to talk in therapy. They refuse to touch the actual wound. It’s all attachment issues, self-worth, fear. And instead of working through that, they pile on sex, breakups, makeups, more chaos. It’s all Band-Aids. And I get it, it’s written that way. Still, it mirrors people who do the same thing.

I watch folks try to escape a problem using the same thinking that built the problem. Then they wonder why they keep spinning. It makes me think a lot about how people don’t always know what they want. Or they think they know, but it’s not the real want. The true thing sits underneath, quiet and ignored.

Watching the show feels like watching a samsara loop in motion. Every episode is another rebirth into the same pain. Same story, slightly different shape. And I realize I do some of this myself. I scoff at the characters, but I know there are choices I make that would look just as messy from the outside.

It’s hard to change when you’re in your own body, too close to everything. Still, I try to notice when I get the chance to step off one loop and start a new cycle. It doesn’t always happen cleanly, but it happens.

Sometimes I wish I could just watch a show without making it deep. But Grey’s keeps pulling me into these questions. How many loops am I still running. How many times have I returned to the same point thinking it was brand new. And how often can I climb the spiral a little higher before I fall back into the same old patterns.