We are creatures of habit. I mean, sure, as animals go, we tend to fight instinct and embrace free will (how else do you explain the 80s?). But humans are more apt to adapt their environment to fit their needs rather than evolve to their surroundings. And like a drug, our way of life becomes addicting. Where and what we eat. Who and what we play with. How we talk. How we love. How we start the frackin' day. How we procrastinate. Day to day, we have the occasional excitement and moment of universal clarity -- but all in all, don't we all long for the comfort of routine? Coffee for breakfast. The warm security of an assigned parking spot. A weekly poker night. A monthly meeting. Reading the Sunday paper. It is far simpler a thing to live routinely than it will ever be to live -- well, what's the opposite of routine? Uncomfortably?
Perhaps that is the lowest common denominator. Being comfortable. Being complacent. And more to the point, is this the reason I'm not looking forward to 2007 as much as I claim to be looking forward to it?
Don't get me wrong -- I fully anticipate uncharted levels of excitement in the coming year. But I know that such things will ultimately lead to changing the way I live my day to day existence. Things will change -- and yet I feel like I'm one of the few people who are actually at all concerned about it. Does this bother anyone else as much as it seems to bother me?
On a completely different train of thought (it's just a night with many synaptic firing patterns to sort through -- you understand), I think I'm too social for my own good. As my five-year-old cousin likes to say: "Seriously". There should be support groups for people like me. Maybe there are, but we're too busy to look for one. To further explain... I am a chronic planner. It's not extraordinary to find my calendar penciled in and booked solid, four to five months in advance. Months. Let's just all appreciate that for its amazing inexplicableness.
It's like I find ways to create social gatherings, busy-work, or even find events or causes that need my help when it's so painfully obvious that I'm already stretched so thin that ending this sentence with a quality simile wasn't an accomplishment meant for me. I like being scheduled to the millisecond, I do, but I'm starting to understand that there's something to be said for throwing the calendar away and enjoying a day without planning. Didn't say it was easy -- but it's easier to understand than it used to be.
So as November passes us by and Aught Seven looms in the not-too-distant-future, I can't help but wonder if this will be the year that the habits are broken. Because to get to where I want to be (and yes, I realize I'm not entirely positive yet as to where that is), the way I live my life today just isn't going to cut it. I think that's true of most of us. At least those of us who are in the gutter but still looking towards the stars. The daily routine, living with the habits... being comfortadors instead of conquistadors... it's not going to get us where we want to go. It's not going to get me to where I want to go.
I think that's how you know what your dream is and, even more importantly, if you have a shot of realizing it... it's what drives you to break your habits and escape the routine. And if it pushes you hard enough -- you might just make it. Just be prepared for the change that comes with it. ... I was about to get all metaphysical about how if you change too much about yourself, are you still you? But it's sunrise in Europe, which means it's way past my bedtime here in the States. So yeah... topic for next time.
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I truly enjoy your posts. They make me think. Stepping out of one's comfort zone to even get a shot at reaching a dream is downright scary sometimes. Maybe that's why many of us find ourselves ending our plans with the word "...someday." Procrastination, fear, habit--I think they're the three of them closely related.
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