One of the things I have loved to hate is routine. It amazes me to see how people easily adapt to anything that becomes a routine. Even if you were told in order to get a certain amount of extra money on your regular pay packet, you had to ingest a horrible pill, get a lamming before you left home each morning, you would in all probability accept it as part of a detestable routine.
Whatever the case, we, the lesser mortals simply cannot do without a routine. I have always believed routines were about fear. Fear of life slipping by so you desperately hold on to the roster — 6am yoga, 7am tea, 8am shower, 8.30am breakfast, 9.30 office, 10.30 meeting, 12 noon assignment deadline, 1.00pm lunch, 2pm client appointment ... and this business of living life doled out to you with clockwork precision by the hour becomes a reassuring blanket that lulls you into believing that you are doing something meaningful. At night, when the madness stops and you curl up in bed, you have that pseudo sense of meaning — of having a method, a structure in your life and of having spent the day in a sane manner.
Look around at the peak hour and you will see people with a great intent and sense of purpose on their faces — on the metro, taxis, cars, buses — with that look of being in control and you feel routines are the best things to have happened to human beings. I find this straightjacket more suffocating than reassuring to me and often fantasise about just popping this boring bubble and stepping out into a real world where spontaneous thinking, out-of-the box plans will leave you breathless with joy.
Try it out. Give the call of the clockwork a miss some day. Refuse to listen to the persistent screech of the alarm, hit dismiss instead of the snooze button, laze around in bed, have all the cups of tea that you always wanted to have, but never had the time for. Read the newspaper back to front, inside-out, give your yoga class a miss, go for the scrumptious brunch you have been thinking about at the corner cafe — in pyjamas. Read your favourite book. Hang around, see real people, listen to real conversations, revel in the rustle of soft napkins, the tinkle of fine cutlery and bone china, let the piano heal your time-ravaged mind.
Back home, try sending a snail mail to your mum instead of the usual email, open the old albums and spend time reliving the pleasures of the past. At night, get out on the verandah in your favourite lounge chair, put on some soothing music and catch up with the quirky characters and charming world of your best-loved author. In other words, be the anarchist and do the things that you think will help break the routine. Just for a day — seek liberation from the expected thing at the expected hour.
However, the sad thing about breaking a routine is that you simply cannot afford this breaking out to become a routine; that is why the joyous moment is so short-lived. The moment you get into the second and third day, it alarmingly threatens to fall into another groove, albeit an offbeat one. Once that beautiful day goes by, you simply wind up the clockwork machine and set that tin soldier within you on the narrow path to do its humdrum jig until it wears you down and you are back to breaking out.
And we continue falling and breaking into this pattern with an alarming regularity, which makes me conclude that human beings are nothing but creatures of routine.
