Run

 

"My heart swings back and forth between the need for routine and the urge to run”.

Many times throughout the past 22 years, I have found myself stuck in a monotonous routine. In high school, as a competitive dancer, during my brief stretch of college, throughout the years that I quietly battled depression and even a few separate times over the past 6 months.

Naturally, human beings crave routine. It’s allows us to free ourselves from the details of decision making. It makes it possible for us to run on autopilot while still completing the tasks set before us. There’s no need to worry about what’s coming next or to plan out your week. A routine provides structure, predictability and allows some to find a purpose in their day. And I believe a lot of people find comfort in that. Because it’s easy.

I’m sure many people know that tomorrow morning they will wake up, check their social media pages, get dressed, eat a quick breakfast, brush their teeth, rush out the door, sit in traffic, count down the seconds until work is over, sit in traffic again, come home, have dinner, put their kids to bed, watch bad tv, have boring sex with their spouse, fall asleep and wake up to do it all again. On repeat. Everyday. For the rest of their life.

However, the problem is that we often forget to re-work, re-evaluate and refresh our routines. We allow our lives to become stale and stagnant. Our creative drive lessens. We forget the purpose of the routine we began in the first place. Our minds start to collect dust and we lose the balance between work and play.

Eventually, a routine can begin to trap you. Many times, a person living in a routine may not even realize it. This is because a life lived in routine does not require you to engage in self-analysis. You are completely unaware of the fact that nothing is progressing. While time may be moving forward and the world may continue to turn, that doesn’t necessarily mean that YOUR life is moving forward. A life lived in routine is in a constant plateau.

I’m sure most people have seen, or at least know of the movie Groundhog Day, in which Bill Murray, must live the same day, in the same place and time, over and over again. At one point on the film, Murray’s character Phil, describes his situation to a man sitting at a bar. He asks “What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing you did mattered?”. The man at bar answers by saying “That about sums it up for me.” The man at the bar is not stuck in a time warp, but he is stuck in a routine. He is trapped in his habits and his way of thinking, his worries, attitude and feelings.

I’ve recently found myself being pulled between the “adult” in me needing a routine for stability and the creative free spirit within me, needing the freedom to run.

While I’ve often dismissed routine as boring, there is a part of me that sees the benefit of creating good habits. For example, having a weekly workout routine, or a weekly reminder to put an extra $50 into your savings account can be helpful. Carving out an hour a day to sit and write down my thoughts is therapeutic and putting aside 30 minutes each night to clean makes me feel like things are in order.

However even though I can see the benefits, I find myself fearing a life lived on repeat. I’m terrified of waking up one day realizing that I’ve gotten myself stuck in the never ending misery of the 9-5ers and their lack of satisfaction. I crave the freedom of a flexible schedule and the adventure of spontaneity.

As obvious as it may seem, I think we can all take a lesson from Phil’s choices to make a change in Groundhog Day. He learns to make the repetitiveness of life benefit him. He takes the time to understand the patterns of his life and learns to replace harmful habits and routines with beneficial ones. He stops living a routine devoted to instant gratification and boosting his ego, to one focused on helping others.

Most importantly, he realizes that he is the creator of his own experience. He has all of the tools within himself to create the life he wants to live.

Repetition doesn’t allow you to experience or create at your fullest potential. And while it may be easy to slip into meaningless routine, it’s important to remember to give yourself room to run. It’s important to remember that it’s up to you to make the choice to get the most out of your life and to share those experiences with those you love.

Living life on autopilot is not living.

 

Photos by Harrison Ponce

(@harrison_ponce)