The Routine of Life ...

Routine is an interesting thing …

When I first moved to Bangalore to join Infosys, the bus ride to work was excruciating. Worst was this single stretch of thirteen km highway, it seemed unending. But as days passed, my eyes started to see and identify landmarks. There were temples, car showrooms, shops, hawkers, traffic pain points that soon segmented the long road and made it easier to traverse.

Routine acclimatize us to the day to day happenings of our average lives.

But routine also makes us complacent. I experience all the time, what I call ‘beginner’s luck’. But I am sure it’s not luck. When we do things for the first time, we are attentive and alive. I have never missed an exit on new routes or hurt a new acquaintance with casual remarks or lost dial in information of kick-off meetings of my new projects. Mistakes happen when we have repeated our actions enough to give them less attention than our preoccupying thoughts and worries.

Routine take us away from life, masking the nuances of change in the routine, in the overwhelming  wet blanket of boredom.

Being alive and living every moment is exhausting while letting them slip by in the smog of daily activities is wasteful. By the way from these two, there is no right or wrong. A life is composed of all kind of hues and colors. At times we are hit with adventures and opportunities while other times we brew in mundane moments.

Life is not a movie maker, magician or joker who made a promise to entertain us. Life is a card dealer at a casino, honestly oblivious of the cards its dealing to us. We can still hold it responsible for our fate and time, but its role and power is very muted compared to the cards in our hands.