When you have a rough start to your week, when everything feels a little bit off the track, getting back to the mundane, “dull” routine, feels wonderful. Laundry, sorting mail, dusting shelves, watering plants, driving to tennis lessons, walking the dogs, planning meals – all of these things are actually a delicious relief and activities to look forward to doing and to completing. When I am emotional, I tend to want to chuck it all, bring it all back to ground zero, quitting everything extraneous and just cling to the basic necessities. That says something about the “necessities” right? Despite considering myself a spontaneous person, I love the structure of my life. I love to scratch things off of my to-do list. Perhaps that is the main point of life’s little emergencies. Perhaps they are nothing more than reminders that the ordinary days are not as banal, and meaningless and non-stimulating as they feel sometimes.
I’ve mentioned before that my new TV addiction is Outlander. In almost every episode, the major characters face huge, yet unique “life versus death” obstacles, suffer major injustices and devastating losses; they go through and yet prevail from serious abuses of power, and at the end of it all, they still manage to look gorgeous and to celebrate with a delicious romp in the bed with each other, making all the right moves and saying all the right words to each other, after experiencing more troubles in just one episode, than anyone in real life, can expect to face in one lifetime. Why do I like the show so much? You would think it would bring up serious questions of my inadequacy. Or maybe getting lost in the fantasy of it all is part of my delicious, conventional, everyday routine? I’m not sure. But for the rest of this week, I am sure that vicarious thrills are quite enough.
