“Life is a long routine, interrupted by moments of wonder and memorable mistakes. Therefore, open your eyes to wonder, and make mistakes with good humor and great frequency.”
This is the thesis I’ve built up over the past two installments. In my (admittedly brief) time on Earth, I’ve learned that the moments I remember most clearly are the ones that are the most exceptional. Biologically, I’m programmed this way, too — my little reptile neurons are trying to keep me alive, and the things most likely to kill me are The Different-Than-Usual Things. Lucky for me, those Things include moments of extreme beauty, and moments so awkward that my reptile brain was convinced death was approaching (that I can laugh about a few weeks later).
But by their very nature, those moments don’t occur often. Even cultivating a habit of wonderment only takes me so far — it might make me more appreciative and thoughtful, but it doesn’t affect the frequency with which wondrous things occur, only how often I notice.
So what then should I do, when I am miserably competent and mistake-free at a dead-end job, and when wondrous moments are suppressed under the eyelid-freezing breath of a Northeastern winter? (I’ve been there, believe me.)
Part of the answer was in the first words I typed: “life is a routine.” I might as well enjoy it.
I have to remind myself of this surprisingly often. It makes sense that I’d forget this, because with every hero’s journey I consume (which, as a Star Wars fan, is a lot) my memory is deluged in entropy, subliminal messages and epic themes predicated on the notion that I can Become A Jedi Like Your Father Before You, or You’re A Wizard Harry, or Take The Ring To Mordor.
But the reality is that my life is not a heroic journey, but a routine. Life, capital-ell-Life, is not really contained in the unforgettable Moment when we cast the Ring into the fires of Mount Doom, because for 99% of us, that moment will never happen. Our journey to Mordor is broken up into half a million forgettable thirty-minute commutes in Northeastern weather, and about eighteen thousand instances of turning off one’s alarm clock. Marriage, similarly, isn’t like Kylo Ren Adam Driver in “A Marriage Story” with a succinct tragedy in two hours flat, but rather two million utterly ordinary seconds’ worth of brushing one’s teeth and sitting in traffic and eating overpriced grain bowls. (The fights are the memorable mistakes I wrote about in part 1, not Life itself. And the marriage starts to end, I’d guess, with the tooth-brushing, not the fighting.)
When I allow this truth to slip away from me, my routine — my very Life — becomes mediated by heroic self-delusion. I let myself believe I’m just waiting for The Moment, and while away my meantime with Reddit binges and gross food eaten too quickly and sleeping in until I regret it. Sometimes, sure, I need to sleep in and eat Oreos. But most of the time, I’ll wake up a week later and wonder what happened to those seven days of Life during which I was zoned out. And I’ll realize that The Moment happened about 604,800 times last week and I missed it.
But when I live into this routine, my Life becomes one of joy in these small moments. Joy in my toothpaste flavor, my oatmeal-and-peanut-butter breakfast, the buildings on my walk to work.
I guess that’s what I’ve been trying to say this whole time:
Life is a long routine punctuated by moments of wonder and memorable mistakes. Therefore, enjoy your routine, open your eyes to wonder, and make mistakes with good humor and great frequency.