The Pursuit and Maintenance of a Routine.

Routines...

Life in the city follows a routine. For the average citizen, he lives in stages, there's the gradeschool stages, highschool stages and college stages, and ever after that, the individual would eventually either work as employee and would basically follow a career path or start his own business and follow a business plan.

Routines, routines, routines.

Man in his work. That's a familiar psychology subject.

Life is all about routines. Whether it's a traditional one(often considered as boring and akin to a sheep's life) or the adventurous variations. Whether a lifestyle is about following a certain fixed pattern of activities or a seemingly random, free-spirited lifestyle. The pattern is still there. The pattern of randomness - the routine of deviating from yesterday's or last week's routine is no more than a routine.

It is said no one is as restless as the one who feels and gives in frequently to the impulse to relax. Many people live their routine with frequent bar-hoppings, leasuire travels, and romantic entanglements. In the end, they are busy with "relaxation activities". Non-job-related, but routines nonetheless. Each individual has his own routine no matter how hard he tries to pretend he's not living one. The one who claims he doesnt follow any rules, is truthfully following one rule - his own.

For most people, work is a means of livelihood... but in the end it would become a life practice. A man's work would eventually define and would become his "life". Work would no longer be a means to an end, it would become the journey.

Many of us can hope to follow two or more "subroutines" in our biological lives. But of course, those who have plenty of resources at their disposal and the right amount charm and luck, can live a routine that span across different job fields and social areas. They can afford to forget their "past life" and "begin" another one in another place. They can build another profile - another identity. They can afford to fail a hundred times more in their journey. Yes, all these are just steps to the pursuit and maintenance of a routine.

Whether we are aware that we have a choice in what routine to choose or maintain, or not, our circumstances are not that different. The specifics may differ, but the outline is the same. We are not that different.

Our routines are our lives; love it or hate it.


II.

We fill our lives with routines. Doing things that we like or things that we have accustomed to doing. We incorporate activities and shed off some as we live our lives. What would life be without work activity? It would'nt be called "living" if the entirety of our biological life were spent in a vegetable state - we would have no "life" both in the dream world and in the physical world.

All throughout the ages, man have attempted to transcend individual life to a higher meaning. Legacy is also a thing that people have become concerned about. Some would say that individual life is just but a speck, chain link or a dot in the bigger journey of his clan, nation or race.

But in this day and age, "lineage", "community" and "society" are terms that have become so important that they have lost their meaning in the air. The common "individual" is often forgotten in the law of the majority and sadly often only remembered during church sermons and in election campaigns. The present circumstances might have possibly severly degraded the essence and meaning of individuals as mere statistics. People are now frequently speak in terms of mass nouns and generalizations (the author of this blog post is no exception).

Society, its technologies and by-products have intentionally or accidentally engineered the routines individuals may take. Now, more than ever, current routines are the outcome of the routines maintained by people in the past. People may think that new job fields, new lifestyles and new perceptions have been opened, when in-truth they are the same old ones just with a little bit of sugar and salt added... and if there is truth to be told, it is that the actual options an individual can take have lessened. A vast majority of the activities we live out are mere subroutines of society. Y es, this is also true in the past but the difference is that now, only a few know and understand of the direction where our society's journey is heading to, and that even fewer know who are in control and there is a big chance that those who are in control are NOT numbered among the people who understand. In the past there were already monarchs and leaders of men, but the routines of humans abide by the earth and the other inhabitants, whether it is by ignorance, by fear or because of respect and reverence.

Now, the earth is bound to the human routines. "Life" is no longer something about life in general, but specifically about "human life". Human routines do not just affect the turn of human events but the events of the whole world.

Human routines have direct and strong impact upon the Earth. In the old days when Buddhism was born, the effects of an action are like the silent ripples created by a small drop of water... but in this age, where all nations are now linked in many ways, effects of a single action are like big thundering waves. Each day, the effects of human routines have become bigger and bigger, stronger and stronger. It is now becoming apparent that many of the effects may not have been all positive, and on the contrary, quite silenty severely negative.

Routines, routines, routines...

Where shall our routines take us?