When In Doubt

It started out, the questions about the monotonous repetition of doing everything, anything. Eating, working, even sleeping, same dreams, nothing changes, always the same.

I found myself counting my actions. Winding up the electric chord or hose; one, two, three, thirty-three. I realized that was, is, one of the cautions attributed to insanity. It has to do, or so I remember, with allowing yourself to be lulled by repetition into a state of subservience to routine. The less one objects to repetition the easier it is to remain calm, comatose if you will.

I realized that is what was happening to me. I realize at one time or another we dislike certain things, people, actions, but they are not objectionable enough to cause us to rebel. We are exposed to the certainty of the craziness, and accept it without question. We have been lulled into the expectancy of calmness brought about by the lack of change. We actually learn to look forward to this fabricated normalcy. We block out any waves that come our way, or worse yet, change them into a rocking motion that furthers our retreat into our devised system of being asleep while awake.

I realized that just putting on my socks demands a consistency, a ritual of consistency that I hadn’t realized it had taken control of this simple act that I had performed for decades and never really thought about. 

Once you start down that road you begin to think about all the other things you do every day, without even noticing you are doing them. Not things like breathing or talking, those are things that are performed automatically for us by an unremembered past, involuntary actions of the mind in an effort to aid in its own survival. They occur without thought, like most of my life.

We are programmed to function in a society, a family, within certain expectations that we accept, because we realize even if mindlessly, it provides a serenity in our existence that we need, even when we don’t realize we need it. We don’t drink something just to be drinking something; there is usually a reason. And yet we never investigate the reason, we just routinely accept the immediate solution. Why is that?

Our habits, my habits, have become in some cases destructive, and yet I continue to condone their existence, because I have been hypnotized by them, drugged. I realized I no longer questioned why I do things. Driving is an example of a routine that when taken for granted can get us killed, and yet we get into our cars everyday as if that possibility doesn’t exist.

I know if we refused to obey our need for regularity, consistency, we would never leave our houses, our own minds. We would all become our own worst enemies. But we also need to pay attention, ask questions about what goes on around us. There has to be an equilibrium that exists between fear and caution, likely and possible. It is what life is really all about. The small immeasurable time between gratification and joy.

A building collapsing, a train derailing, a bridge crumbling, all things that happen everyday and yet we continue to believe they won’t happen to us. I know it is a necessary means that allows us to function, or we would be rendered immobile by the probability that all manner of danger follows us daily. But to ignore it completely as a way to remain functional, safe, seems as if we are missing out on a lot of what life has to offer, what it is all about, or should be.

I don’t advocate we attempt to be high wire artist, or tempt fate in other ways, but to ignore the possibility that our everyday existence is just another day erased by the monotony of routine, seems to me we are devolving. Going backwards from that first time we have matured enough physically to remember. Our first memory. That first memory, not noticed, not celebrated as it should be.

It couldn’t have been accompanied by any form of fear or reluctance, as those are but instincts we had as yet to learn. But once learned, how do we curtail their power over us and allow ourselves to forget probability and think only of possibility?

I’ve tried several techniques I’d hoped would change the way I looked at life. Not life in general, but in small ways that I can control. Socks for example, changed my routine. Driving: remembered what it is I am doing, the responsibility involved, the attention necessary. The electric chord, the hose, just remembered the reason for placing them in a position required for them to fulfill their destinies. They are not mathematicians; they simply don’t care how many times they are forced into a position that satisfies our needs. 

I realized that fear exists only because we allow it to. It has no more power over us than what we allow. We can simply ignore the inclination to follow its advice, or just refuse to be controlled by its ever presence.

Of course it all seems easy, just pay attention, change your routines, change your outlook, change who you are. But we know it is not, or as the saying goes, “everyone would be doing it.”

When I begin to feel like I’m in a bumper car, the world and its passengers are flying about like crazed bats, some with that gleam in their eye that says, “You are next.” I close my eyes and remember nothing is as bad as we imagine it to be. The world will continue to spin, the sun rise, the stars come out, and that all consistency, although taken for granted, is calming even though we may wish to ignore it because of its consistency. 

What I realized, is in a world where ugliness bombards us daily, we are capable of ignoring it, changing the way we regard it, looking the other way when necessary. Not allowing it to become the pervasive aroma of the dead skunk in the middle of the road. It is not easy to change the routine, just go with the flow, but it is necessary or we become part of what we find distasteful, unrelenting, overpowering placidity.   

Being right-handed I find it helpful to realize that perspective changes when you decide, if even for a short time, to be left-handed. It changes your attitude, not only about left-handed people, but about the ability only half of us utilizes, a part of our brain. Sometimes when we are feeling apathetic about life it is because we have succumbed to the routine of it. Sometimes we need to get run over by our own train to realize that riding the bus may be an alternative we have not considered sufficiently. We sometimes have to get out of bed even when it is cold and rainy even when we don’t want to. The dog after all has plans for his day as well.