life changes | Bertram's Blog

Mindful Routine

January 21, 2022 — Pat Bertram

What Socrates supposedly was referring to by his comment that “the unexamined life is not worth living” is a life spent under other people’s rules and under the rule of other people as well as being stuck in a mindless routine without ever stopping to figure out what you really want. Perhaps a life of mindless routine might not worth living (I certainly wouldn’t want to, and for the most part, I managed to live on my own terms), but for sure it would be unfulfilling.

Apparently, people in droves are coming to the same conclusion, hence the phenomenon known as “the great resignation.” So many employees did their jobs without really thinking about what they wanted because they had to work so they could pay their bills, and these resignees would probably still be stuck in their mindless routines if not for the Bob. The abrupt change in routine changed things for a lot of people and gave them time to actually consider what they were doing. It also illuminated the briefness of life, at least for some people, and made them realize they didn’t want to be doing the job they were doing. (It makes me wonder if the currently vaunted low unemployment rate is less about full employment and more about people temporarily opting out.)

Although the newscasters have talked about this so-called great resignation, there’s been no talk about a change in people’s marital status as far as I know, but I would think that the enforced life change brought about by the Bob could also affect marriages. I do know a lot of people, when forced into close proximity to their mates, realized their shared lives were less than satisfactory. Some were married to abusers and with the Bob had no way to escape even temporarily the trauma of such treatment. Others were simply bored. In a few cases, the couple’s love was rekindled. It will be interesting to see what sociological changes will come from people being forced to examine this part of their life, too.

It does seem odd to me that such major changes are taking place, not because the changes are incomprehensible (because they aren’t; they are totally understandable), but that they are so far removed from my own life. I did start working shortly after the Bob showed up, but that change in my circumstances had nothing to do with anything going on in the world; it was just how things worked out. And, of course, I have no marital status or couplehood to change because that was a done deal more than a decade ago. (In just a few weeks, it will be the twelfth anniversary of his death.)

Even when I think I don’t examine my life (as I talked about in my blog post yesterday), I do tend to think about things and to look inward, if for no other reason than to examine my life for a blog topic. Luckily, there are no great changes in circumstances or thoughts or feelings to discuss, though I am aware of small fluctuations during the day. This close to the anniversary, for example, I tend to tear up a bit now and again, but it’s not worth talking about because of the brevity of those moods. (I hate to use the word “mood,” because they are not moods so much as deep feelings rising to the surface, but there’s really no other word to describe such brief fluctuations in feelings.)

I do seem to be in a routine, however — working, blogging, reading, thinking — but it’s not the mindless routine that Socrates was against but rather a mindful routine.

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Posted in culture, grief, life. Tags: a fulfilling life, how Covid changes lives, life changes, mindless routine, Socrates, the great resignation, the unexamined life. 2 Comments »

The Coming End

December 27, 2021 — Pat Bertram

This week seems to be a time out of time, when people are concentrating on the year to come, planning New Year’s Eve events, making resolutions (or at least thinking of making them), and even shopping at year-end sales in preparation for next year’s needs. Like everyone else, that’s generally how I’ve thought of this time — as a few extra days tacked on to the end of the real year in preparation for the next real year.

Despite all that focus on the future, there are a few days left of this year, time enough to hurry up and finally do some of the things you resolved to do when this year was new, and time enough to celebrate the remaining days because every day should be a day to celebrate, if only that we are still alive.

Oddly, for the first time in my life, I am very aware of this year coming to an end. I can actually feel a sense of finality, though I’m not sure whether it’s for the year itself or for some as yet unknown experience. I don’t in any way think that I am prescient; this feeling of an end could be what I originally intimated — that the year (and only the year) is coming to an end. The feeling could also be due to my spending so much time alone and hence able to feel some sort of change in the atmosphere. (A change in weather is coming, that’s for sure — there won’t be any of these balmy winter days for a while.)

But what do I know. Not much, really. I do know that all things end, whether it is a day, a month, a season, a year. And yet years don’t really end, now that I think about it; they just roll over into a new calendar year with no clear demarcation between the end and the beginning, the old and the new (except for a new calendar, of course.) We’re still the same, though I wonder what it would be like if those resolutions could be actual changes, not just feeble plans to make changes that so quickly dissipate in the sameness of the new year.

To be honest, I’m not sure many of us could handle real changes, to wake up on January first, suddenly fit and healthy, disciplined and kind, rich and satisfied, or whatever it is that we wish we were that we aren’t. I suppose it’s healthier in the long run to realize we are who we are, with an ability (or rather an inability) to make any significant changes to ourselves or our lives from one year to the next, though changes do happen.

Maybe that’s the “end” I feel so acutely right now — the end of hoping to be the person I wish I were and a greater acceptance of the person I am.

Or it could be, as I said, that the feeling of “end” is nothing more significant than a simple awareness that this is the end of the year, a thing in itself, not a prelude to something else.