I just came from my vacation in Norway and Denmark and I have been thinking about my last post. I tried to express the idea that I believe that we can get stuck in our own routines, rituals and thinking patterns that there is probably no way out until you happen upon someone or something that slowly influences you until you become a different person. After writing and rewriting that post for two hours, I think I still did not manage to capture what I had in mind, so I am going to try again.
What I have been trying to describe is the awareness that comes from a break from your routine. It can come from either going on vacation, hanging out with someone or just having a cold and thinking about how good you had it when you were able to breathe. It can also be the moment when you realize you can use your kitchen table to fold laundry on it instead of breaking your back on the floor or bed like you have been doing for the last two years. It can be the moment when you realize you can have chicken nuggets with fries for dinner or just skip it entirely. It can be the moment when you do the most random things that you normally wouldn't do.
My question is... how do we get more of these moments and especially ones that change us long term? For instance, how does someone go from worrying about keeping their home perfectly clean all the time to realizing that they don't need to? How does one go from having a messy home to realizing that they can keep a home clean, but it takes time to learn how to do it and build routines and that it is okay to take it slowly? How does one go from hating the idea of biking because they cannot ride a bike to realizing it is never too late to learn to ride a bike and enjoy it?
In my previous post I said that we would need to be consistently surrounded by people with different lives than us until we get influenced into a new direction. I still believe that that may be the fastest way of achieving this, but I now also believe that being on the look out for inspiration, trying out new things just for the sake of it and maybe questioning the things that cause us distress may at least point us into the right direction.
Are you developing a pattern about writing about being stuck in a pattern?
ReplyDeleteOk, jokes aside. I think you're right about the fastest way of breaking these patterns is haning out with diferent people. It's like a process of asimilation.
What I find also helps me snap out of patters and obsessive behaviour is dping a short term project. I suppose a vacation works the same. But it can be anything from creative work to "im deep cleaning this apartment in 4 days and doing it like my life depends on it" or im attending some events for the next few days. Anything goes as long as it breaks you out of the routine and forces you to "temporarily" do things different. You may come back to them with a new appreciation of the routine or have the perspective needed to be like "what's wrong with me? Who does things that way?"