Routines and Life Examination

Last night and tonight, I've been thinking a lot about routines, and how it affects our processes of self-examination, and examination of our life.

Yesterday following school, Jackie traveled down to Indianapolis for a seminar with several co-workers, not returning back until late tonight.  Thus, the last two nights have been just Ellie and me around the house.  It kind of highlighted how routine based our lives are, as everything seemed out of whack.

Ellie, who currently is continuing to rip to shreds her spotted rag (also the toy formerly known as giraffe), didn't play with a single toy while Jackie was gone.  Rather, she spent practically all of both evenings laying either on me or right beside me.

I, who usually start dinner as soon as I get home, ended up waiting several hours before getting around to "make" myself something - with both nights consisting of a bowl of cereal and some assorted food items.  I'm usually so particular about planning my meals and wanting to have that hot dinner at the table, but not when it would just be me (I didn't have this problem living alone during law school, just now).  I watched the 6:30pm national news broadcast, and I can't remember the last time I watched the national news on TV.  I watched a Christmas special on television (the lighting of the tree in Rockefeller Center), solely because I knew that is what Jackie would have been watching if she were home, though she also would have flipped to "A Charlie Brown Christmas."

Our lives sometimes have that "lather, rinse, and repeat" quality to it that you don't notice until something, however small, interrupts or jostles it.  Such, in and of itself, doesn't strike me as something that is positive or negative.  But it is a two-folded challenge, I think.

For one, its a challenge to appreciate the routine - appreciate the comfort it provides, and how the comfort can rejuvenate and sustain us.  Having a solid routine can mean we are avoiding the up and downs that seem to come naturally with life.  Obviously, some of those peaks and valleys cannot be avoided, but the journey can be much smoother is our daily routine can avoid the emotional roller-coaster.  Simply, a good routine and provide a true sense of calm and peace; and that calm and peace can be such a good foundation for life.

But its also a challenge to avoid becoming a slave to the routine, to placing the routine above all else, and avoiding the practice of examining one's life.  Doing so can result in losing flexibility to deal with those inevitable peaks and valleys.  More troublesome, I think, is that placing the routine on the pedestal above all else can result is making decisions that, while preserving that routine, causes us to miss opportunities to better ourselves, our relationships, and our communities.

Finding that balance - between cherishing the routine without becoming beholden to it - I imagine to be a process of constant struggle, and a cause for reflection and examination.  But regardless of the internal struggle such process can result it,  I would think that such is better than not engaging in that reflective process at all.

"The unexamined life is not worth living." - Socrates

"The examined life ain't worth chub." - Gus, The River Why