The human mind
excitement and wants to be busy, wanting new experiences. We think happiness comes from the ‘exciting’ days of our lives. But these exciting days are far and few in most people’s lives. The major part of our lives is just routine maintenance. This is true of the lives of ordinary folks and celebrities. Often we look at the life of the famous and think their lives must be full of exciting days. Just that their routines are different. Think of a race car. Most of the days, it is in maintenance mode and a few days in a year it gets into the excitement of a race.
To enjoy life, we have to learn to enjoy our routine days as they constitute a majority of our lives. One day will be like another day with nothing much different happening. Some days are of mild excitement - a visitor to our house, a day shopping, running into an old friend etc. Very few days are a totally different experience - an event at home or outside, a trip to some new place, a vacation, new job etc. If we think fun in life is having only those excitement days then we set up ourselves for deep disappointments. Irrespective of what job one does, most of the days involve doing the routine, grudge work.
Falling in love with our routines is important to our well-being. Cleaning the place where we live, taking care of body hygiene, caring for those who live with us including pets and dogs, catching up with news, doing some physical work, relaxing with music, TV or music at home, attending to our work at office/home if we are into earning and doing ‘nothing’ for some part of the day. That is the normal day and that is the bulk of our living.
The importance of routines cannot be underestimated in our lives. Routines root us to our reality. It gives a sense of stability in our lives. It gives us a sense of being in touch with our lives. When we experience ‘negative excitement days’ in our lives, having a loved one hospitalized, some mishap in the neighbourhood, some stress in our homes, we would be craving for our ‘normal days’
If we learn to fall in love with our routines, we look forward to them when we wake up and we don’t have to go in search of ‘happiness’.