Specks of Gold Amidst the Mundane
Navigating the Suffering of the Daily Routine in Hopes for an Eventful Day
How often have you woken up to an exceptionally dull Wednesday, realising nothing had happened or will happen that week? An average human being without any sort of dissociative disorder would vehemently nod to this exact feeling. We find ourselves in a limbo of sorts for the majority of our life. This is the part where nothing of import happens; you are just following your daily routine — eating breakfast, getting on the train, going to work or college, sleeping at your desk, attending a boring meet, and returning home to sleep. Rinse. Repeat.
Our nonstop endeavours to overcome this boredom is characteristic of modern human life. There are different ways to phrase this feeling: the eternal cycle of boredom, the daily disappointment, or on a more positive outlook, the ‘Specks in between the Mundane’. How can there be such mind-numbing mediocrity amidst the glittering experiences that spark joy in between?
In the manga series “Jujutsu Kaisen” by Gege Akutami, one of the mentor figures, Nanami, talks about the drudgery of life. His motto in life is that daily life is all but despair. The young (albeit barely) me decided to purge this off my mind labelling it as a quirky anime trope that got inserted. But almost two years since coming across that idea, I have come to appreciate it immensely. According to him, these ‘despairs’ could be nothing more than minor inconveniences. But chained across lengths like a massive multi-hit Street Fighter combo, it starts to wear you down and take its toll on you.
The minor inconveniences can range from your fridge stinking of cabbage after you forgot to put it in a Ziploc, the router being erratic with the connection, the taste of Sambar at your favourite restaurant being distinctly different (RIP Saravana Bhavan), your regular train being unnaturally crowded at your usual time. But all in one day, and you might be the most miserable man to exist for a brief duration of 24 hours.
“The accumulation of these small despairs is what makes you into an adult.” Nanami, Jujutsu Kaisen
The above quote sounds jaded, but I think it makes us mature into more understanding or patient selves who can move on despite the barrage of nuisances. Why did I choose to randomly talk about something that might be as mundane as the title mentions?
I’d like to think that aside from very few exceptions, humans cannot appreciate the highs and lows of life without having anything to compare it with. Without experiencing the lows, it would be hard to feel truly grateful for the highs. Not everyone will have a straight, flat-lined life; it might dip down momentarily or burgeon upwards for some time, but it always, ALWAYS returns to normalcy.
One story I can think of is the Gold Rush. A brief period that imbued madness into people who searched for tiny gold nuggets in vast oceans of silt in the riverbeds of the US in the 19th Century. In their frenzy, they did not get disheartened by the sand and water that kept moving through the sieve with no trace of gold flakes. Was this idiocy or an attempt to control the highs in life?
I pose the question — Do we let the specks come with the flow, or do we actively seek it? There may have been scientific journals studying the effects of the mundane in daily human life, but I believe that a healthy dose of seeking and waiting is the right way to live life. Each step you take might not be important, but it is still a step taken to move away from mundane life.
