Routines

Routines are integral parts of human existence these days, given that elections to select the people that govern nations and visits to doctors to treat the smallest of ailments are bound by time all the same. Today, I’m going to take a crack at the importance of routines in our daily lives.

I think the biggest thing is just focusing on the day-to-day, your routine, not getting caught up in the future or the past and just being right there and focusing on what you have to do that day or that night to help your team win.

-Christian Yelich

We have been conditioned to live in a world where we are subjected to many assignments during our stints of activity. These assignments are from various facets; personal, professional, spiritual, physical, mental, social; well, the picture should be clear. In order to take a prudent approach to accomplish feats per our capabilities, what do we do? We arrange these activities according to the time that we have during a day, which is called a “routine”.

Let me take another view to this concept. Initially, the point of a routine is to prioritize all the aforementioned activities. We start to perform these activities with the gusto of a young man, while having the vision of an old one. However, as time passes, these activities become habits. A small example of this can be workaholics; people who become “overly absorbed” with their work to an extent when they start to ignore other activities. This however, defeats the purpose of having a routine in the first place, given that we are now obsessed so much with just one area that the others start to get neglected.

Workaholics bring their “work” to every place they go, regardless of where they are going. The carrying of the work, however, isn’t in the physical form (usually, ask people around me how I function, and you might find something entirely to the contrary, but we’re talking about normal people here, aren’t we?). The constant thoughts, stress, deadlines are trapped and ingrained so deep into their brains that it becomes close to impossible staying in the moment for them. While looking at someone of this category, I used to ask myself, why would someone want to do this? Why not leave things be where they are?

Recently, I got the response to this question of my own, not in the most pleasant way, but yeah, in retrospect, it could have been much worse. The response was to not feel a void. Let me explain. In life, there are only a few things that are undeniably crucial for survival; breathing and ingestion of food and water and excretion. Everything else that we do is only to either improve the quality of living; be it exercising for fitness, entertainment activities for well, entertainment or interacting with other people for social purposes. Everything apart from the three primary activities is optional.

Imagine for a minute, if the world was to only undertake the three primary bodily functions as the purpose of existence. It would be less than a year before the entire human race goes extinct, stewing in its own filth. Not because the other things are important for survival, but because everything else that is mentioned is something the human race looks forward to during the day. Is it visible now? The routines we make for ourselves are what give us incentive to look forward to something. They kill the monotony of living. It is kind of ironic when we look at it as a standalone statement, but given the right perspective, to me at least, it makes complete sense.

All these activities help us avoid the feeling of being empty, shallow, broken shells of people that we could be. How did I learn it, I hear? Alright, alright, I’ll divulge. A very large chunk of my routine was recently cut out of my life, due to reasons inexplicable. There were times when it was extremely difficult to look through that empty portion of my life. And just like an addict, going through withdrawal syndrome, I got anxious, sweaty and emotional thinking about what my life would be without it. It is similar to how a workaholic reacts when he/she is between jobs, questioning their existence and what they are without work.

Funnily enough, the solution to this problem came through from the same source as the problem itself. I needed a new routine, something to replace this activity that occupied a chunk of my time and mental faculties. Why, because the time which was now left empty gave me thoughts that I wouldn’t normally have about myself like thoughts of inadequacy. As soon as that activity is replaced with something else, the state of mind is altered and everything starts to make sense again.

Yet another one of these musings ends with another daunting question, when we realize that having more than one things as our focus in lives gives us an easier, more convenient way of leading lives, why is it that we insist on having one primary purpose? Given that everything is highly susceptible to change, what if we have one primary purpose, but that purpose is taken away from us. What does that do to our psychology and quality of living?