Breaking the routine

Man tends to make his life easier by decreasing the amount of effort required by daily activities and this goal is efficiently achieved by the setting up of routines. We realise how a new task, say taking medication, is in the first days something we have to put our head into, but soon becomes incorporated into the daily rota and we end up doing the thing mechanically, practically unawares. The evidence is that if we try to remember doing that particular action on a more conscious level, it’s when we start having doubts about actually performing it at the right time.

We tend to build patterns requiring increasingly less mental and physical effort, and this is a good practice, because intelligence is whetted in the process of devising new methods. However, routines need changing from time to time, otherwise the low degree of involvement alienates us from what can still be lived as a daily pleasure rather than run-of-the-mill drudge.

Modifying the routine paradoxically involves breaking the wall of resistance that our laziness has laboriously built around itself, which is mostly a sort of mental reluctance to the necessity of reaching a new equilibrium. When change comes from outside, it is often felt as imposed and therefore is less likely to be accepted and indeed, enjoyed. My theory, however, is in favour of introducing novelty of one’s own accord, however slight it may be, so as to make one’s daily habits different from time to time. This can be purposefully changing the means of transport I go to work with, or banally modifying the repeated walking itinerary to a given place.

Nevertheless, periodically the weight of these habits becomes too heavy to bear, even with my artificial variations. It is at this point that I need a major change and start dreaming of an escape: trip-planning gets under way. From a long time before departure I savour the thrill of my next adventure and the emotions handed out by a new country to discover. When the moment of leaving comes up, I am inevitably swarmed by apprehension, proportionally stronger as “country risk” increases (I must acknowledge that my travel destinations are often off the beaten track and that I usually travel solo).

Alternating between routine and thrill eases the otherwise unbearable thought of a life spent in one single place, doing roughly the same things, surrounded by approximately the unchanging scene, doing a repetitive job.