Spring Planting Moon
The only difference between a grave and rut are the dimensions. Oh? At least when you’re in a rut you can still breathe. Breathing means hope. Nothing definite, for sure, but hope.
This cliche points at a perceived truth, that being stuck in sameness is a living death. And you can certainly how that might be true. Work at a convenience store, come home, warm up a tv dinner, grab a beer, fall asleep in the recliner. Get up and do it again.
Or drive into the city, park the expensive car in the expensive parking slot ride the elevator up to a posh office, direct, command, leave and drive the expensive car home to the expensive house. Get up and do it again.
Sure. That can mean a restricted, narrowed way of greeting this vast opportunity called life. But. People like me find certain routines soothing, they pave the way for creative activity, for hard concentration. Routines allow the needs to be taken care of. That way the non-routine acts of writing, scholarship, thinking, close looking and reading can happen on their own rhythms.
I like the bowl of fruit, some cottage cheese and a tomato in the morning, reading the paper, having some tea, then heading downstairs to start work. I suppose you could call that a rut, the food boring, the repetition bland, I find it nourishing and centering. You say cereal, I have tomato.
My opinion? Pick your routines and habits carefully, make sure they support the things you do that matter the most, not the other around. Then reinforce them as much as you can. If you’re like me, that is.