Routines

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In our day-to-day lives, rather than to discover new ways to do the same old tasks every time we perform those tasks we seem to choose to slip into a routine. A route, or pattern that allows us to get these things done, almost without having to think about them.
And for many of the things we do during the day this turns out to be an efficient way to go about them ~ whether it is doing the dishes or filling up the dishwasher; more often than not following the routine we have set up for ourselves will prove to be fast, and will prevent us from forgetting steps in that process.

In some sense, even our every-day lives seem routine-like every once in a while ~ between work, home, kids, pets, sports, and social events we set a pattern that pretty soon becomes a routine. And this routine may not be quite the same from day to day ~ it can turn out to be a weekly, or even bi-weekly routine.

As life goes by, following the same routine over and again, there comes a point at which we may wake up and realize that things like excitement, enthusiasm, and adventure have disappeared from our lives altogether... We may find ourselves being bored with the way life is. And desperate to bring some ‘life’ back into our lives, we may change jobs, change partners, move to a new area, only to find that after a while we settle back into a (new) routine.

And while routines can be helpful to us in our lives ~ they can also stand in our way...

And then things can happen in our lives that shake us up so badly that we cannot do anything but to reinvent ourselves, reinvent our lives, and start living our lives with a much greater sense of presence. Being more present and aware. Living in the present...

Events so powerful that we go through these tremendous changes are different for each and every person ~ the way we react to those events are unique and individual.
For some and event like this may have to do with an health issue. For others it may be something like witnessing a traumatic happening like an accident. ‘Disasters’ brought about by our changing earth certainly qualify. The immediate effects may be financial or emotional.
And yet they have one thing in common ~ they shake us out of the routines of our day-to-day lives.

Having lost our boring yet safe and secure routines, the first thing we may experience is a sense of having no control ~ a kind of floating feeling without focus or direction. Then, as we create a new foundation for ourselves, and start looking around where we ‘have landed’ ~ we may see everything around us from a new perspective; see it with ‘new eyes’. And finally, as our lives take shape and form again ~ we live our lives with a new awareness. A new presence.
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