The Monotony of Life?

I was having a discussion the other day with a friend about his fear of the monotony of life. He told me he was afraid of living a life that was a 9-5 work day, coming home, tv, sleep, repeat. His fear was that life would get boring, friends would get boring and, worst of all, that family would eventually get boring.

This conversation has stayed in my mind the last week or so and I have wondered about his fears at those times in the night when everything is silent except all the thoughts in your head. I have wondered if he is right, that life is a treadmill of monotony and then you die. I have wondered if people have always thought like this, and if not, where did it come from? I have wondered and asked myself and the night if I too fear life being boring?

I think that in a life bombarded by advertising telling us that our lives will not be truly happy til we buy a, b, or c then it is totally understandable that we are growing generations of people terrified of being boring, of being still, of things not constantly changing. We have bred an age of people who do not know how to live the same day in and day out. We must be buying something new, seeing something new, going somewhere new, dating someone new. If life is boring it is our fault, the problem is with us and we must do something to fix it, to make it exciting again. The age of irresbonsibility (cunningly disguised in the title 'adolesence') is getting older and older because people are afraid of being responsible, of being boring.

But if you really stop to consider a life without routine I think that that is a decidedly scarier thought. Imagine a life where you can't rely on your job being there in the morning, can't trust your partner/spouse/boy/girlfriend to be there for you and consistent in the way they are (hmmm, actually that sounds a lot like some people I know....). Imagine not being able to rely on a paycheck every week, food on the table, money in the bank (well, most of the world lives like that so maybe we should count our blessings...). Imagine that the day in day out 'boring' stuff of life changed at random any day in liked and tell me how much fun would it be living in a world like that? Would it be less stressful, happier, more exciting? Or would it become so unstable that people would be desperate for monotony? Is that in fact why we have such high rates of suicide and drug and alcohol problems, because people can't stay up to speed with this world that changes so fast? Perhaps it is the boring that makes the exciting exactly that.

I am getting married in just over two months and, I have to say, I am looking forward to waking up everyday to the same face, to seeing him and dinner time, to knowing he will be there for me, to having our house with our stuff and not having the nomadic life of a single. Call me boring, but I think all of that is exactly what I was made to enjoy.