Awash in Futility

The French have a phrase, “métro, boulot, dodo”, a catchy little saying that translates as “subway, work, sleep.” Subway. Work. Sleep. The same old routine.  Day in, day out.  Subway, work, sleep.  That’s how it goes, and everyone knows that. And yet: every few months, I tumble into a mini existential crisis in which I feel like sinking to my knees, arms and face lifted to the sky while crying out dramatically, “Is this all there is??”

Unsurprisingly, like most people, I find comfort in routine.  I find reassurance in its reliability.  Heck, I work at a school - the days are structured and the schedule repetitious.  But on occasion, that same reliable, comfortable routine can feel suffocating, suppressive, and claustrophobic.  Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, every week the same.  And we repeat this OVER AND OVER again, unceasingly.  Every day you put on your makeup.  Every day you go to work.  Every day you eat something for dinner.  Every day you decide whether or not to exercise.  Even if you have exercised daily for the last week, it’s a new day, and like everything else, the things you did yesterday don’t carry over.  Do them again.  Go to work again.  Grocery shop again.  Go to church.  AGAIN.  The cycle is perpetual and never-ending.  

I know this isn't the most lighthearted of posts - allow me to supplement it with some photos I took from the Phoenix Art Museum's exhibit, "Michelangelo: Sacred and Profane," masterpiece sketches from the Casa Buonarotti. 

I have so many goals, so many ideas I would like to transform into a reality, so many things I would like to accomplish, and yet whilst in the confinement of my daily routine, I use that same routine as an excuse not to work towards my goals.  I’m tired when I get home from work.  Sometimes I have errands to run or I need time alone to decompress.  Occasionally I’ll make dinner and then find time to exercise; maybe I’ll go to a church or social activity, or wile away my time in front of my computer or my phone or the TV screen.  Inevitably, the evening will pass, I’ll shower and go to bed, only to wake up and do the exact same thing over again the following day.  With all of that going on, where is there room for self-improvement and growth? How and where and when and what am I doing to bring me closer to my goals? 

Along with the rest of the humanity, I felt buoyed up with hope and possibility as 2016 settled around my shoulders, and I ambitiously made a list of resolutions so extensive I had to divide it up into multiple categories.  I excitedly brainstormed all the ways I was (am?) going to improve myself to be healthy, frugal, efficient, productive, and successful.  But now that we’re a few weeks into the New Year, the new month, I find that I’m vaguely aware of those goals in the back of my mind, but when am I actually going to make croissants from scratch again and reach Anna Karenina? I feel my routine enclosing around me in a cocoon, and in doing so, I voluntarily let it mask the plethora of possibilities only an arm’s reach away, too safe and secure in my current orbit to extricate myself, even when I find myself gazing longingly at other possibilities of what could be.  Of what I could be. 

Ultimately, I have to ask myself for what I am searching that makes my routine, the repetitiveness of my quotidian life, feel so restrictive.  Is it happiness? Contentment? Success? Achievement? Fulfillment?  Time will inevitably pass and in doing so, everything changes, but it also stays the same.  The day-to-day work might be different on a Wednesday from a Tuesday, but overall, it will be the same routine.  This is where I come to my fork in the road.  Do I stay where I am because it’s comfortable and I’m content and it all feels familiar and safe? Do I continue on this current trajectory, letting it take me where it will, relinquishing my preferences and control to powers already instituted? Or do I eschew all of that in favor of taking a big risk, scary in its unknowability, all on the premise that the outcome could possibly be better than what I currently have? Of course, I could wind up dissatisfied with my new path, or after the novelty has worn off, maybe it will settle me back into my hammock of contentment, and four years from now I’ll find myself asking these same questions once more.  But will it be worth it?

Do I sit on the beach, occasionally wading down into the water, letting the current gently jostle me from side to side, cautious to never stray too far from my towel and my cooler and my umbrella and my sunscreen? Or do I hop in my motor boat and putter off to that little island just a little ways away?  Sure, there might be sharks and jellyfish out in the expanse of ocean between the safety of this shore and the refuge of that island…but there also might not.  Sure, my boat might break down and I might have to get out and swim, but I can do it.  I was on the swim team in middle school.  I can get there one way or another.  And no one, not even I, can guarantee that I’ll even like the island.  It will probably be fine there – same climate, same temperature, same accessibility to the water as where I currently stand, simply a different locale.  It might not even be better than my current setup, just different.  BUT WHERE DO I WANT TO BE??

I’m petrified of being stagnant, and yet that selfsame fear has left me idling exactly where I've been for the last several years, dreaming about all the “MORE” I could be accomplishing, yearning after it, and yet not undertaking the effort to achieve it. 

Deep down, I have the gnawing sense that I’m capable of more than what I’m doing, wondering if it is that desperation that serves as the motivation to continually drive me to be better and bolder.  Maybe…but at the same time, where do I draw the line? While it’s exciting and important to have lofty dreams and the courage to pursue them, at some point, I will have to learn to be content with where I am and what I have.  If not, I have every assurance that I will end up unhappy in pursuit of an obtainable nirvana, always looking for something ethereal, frustratingly just out of reach. 

I know that I will never achieve perfect bliss in my relationships, my job, my role in my family, or even with myself.  Of course, if happiness IS what I’m ultimately searching for, it cannot be contingent upon my external circumstances, which are continually rearranging themselves.  If the situation in which I now reside, a snapshot of the life I’m currently living, was my only option for existence, would I be able to achieve happiness and contentment in what I am doing right this instant? Or do I only question my happiness because I’m tempted by the extraneous possibilities of “what could be?” 

 (Sorry, I now realize that this rhetorical question situation is getting way out of hand.)

I am afraid that I will spend my entire life in this tug-of-war, fighting against the tension from being content in my present circumstances and being pulled by that desperation and motivation to do more and be better, unsure when to be satisfied with either. 

This year, 2016, I will have been out of college for FOUR years (!!), and now I’m looking around, awaking from my stagnant snooze, wondering what I have to show for myself.  I feel as though I’m on the cusp.  Of change, of newness, of a big risk, I’m still not entirely certain.  But I feel as though the jig is up and it’s time to blaze my trail once again.  With a start, I realize that I haven’t really planned my life past 25, and now that I am 25, I feel unanchored and adrift.  My future is spread out before me, an expansive blank canvas, and while people reassure me that it’s exciting by how unwritten my future appears, that I could go or do or be anything, the prospect is admittedly terrifying.  Regardless: it’s time to make some changes.  It’s time to plan.  To make decisions about grad school and my future career.  To meet and date real people, not their online profiles. 

Despite the unwarranted perception that I am singular and special for experiencing the travails through which I am currently slogging, I know I’m not the only one in this rut, this confusion, this fog and unease.  However, with sweaty palms and nervous reluctance, I FINALLYYYYY paid off my credit card this week, all in one scary and liberating lump sum, and so I know that even if it's rocky, at least I'm on an upward path towards some kind of change.