As I pulled into my parking garage this morning the song “I Just Want To Celebrate Another Day Of Living” by the rock band Rare Earth was blasting on my radio. As soon as I got out of my car my mindfulness bell on my telephone went off reminding me to be in the moment. Within a minute I had two reminders to get out of my current funk. Yesterday one of my former teachers wrote me an email saying, “What’s this obsession with aging? I’m older than you are and I feel young”. All of this reminded me of something called “Acedia”. Acedia is a monastic term that describes a kind of boredom with one’s routines. It is an east rut for monks and everyone else to fall into. My life is very routine. I wake up at the same time every morning. I leave home at the same time every day and I arrive at work at the same time every day. While at work I do the same things every day and more often than not I do them in the same order. I take my breaks and go on my walks at the same time most days. When I leave work I have the same routines for going home and for things I do at home. Most days I am on auto-pilot and I don’t even realize it. One can quickly and regularly become bored with such regularity and not even realize it until it manifests itself as a funk. Now I am not expecting any significant changes in my life anytime soon. Most of my routines revolve around my responsibilities so I can’t discard most of them even though I can be on the lookout for signs of obsessive-compulsiveness. If I can’t change most of my routines, perhaps I can strive to change my ways of things so that I am in a better mindset to “celebrate another day of living”. Who wants to be in the moment if you’re bored with the moment? I will look for ways big and small to celebrate living. I encourage you to do the same.
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