Beauty in monotony
‘Monotony’, the word that usually holds the meaning of worrisome lack of variety, had never felt like something that deserved to be celebrated. When we hear it, we immediately let ourselves delve into its negative parts, and neglect a beautiful side to this coin. In a world where people are constantly looking forward to adrenaline rush, and their next dopamine high, monotony has become something to be frowned upon. Moreover, there’s this preconceived notion that we need to jump from one place to another, try everything we see in our way, and learn as much as we can to claim to have lived a good life. As a fellow human being who once got on the bandwagon of kicking monotony out of their door to catch up with the pace of this world, I’ve realized deep down we crave it more than we would like to believe. After constantly trying to push my boundaries, I burned out and realized I needed to press pause on it. I saw different places and met new faces but at the end of the day when I returned to my usual room today, I released a breath that I felt like, I was holding all along. It’s the same room that I’ve been in my entire life, the room whose every nook and corner I’m familiar with, that gives me the utmost relief and the freedom to be my most vulnerable shelf. Under this overwhelming craziness of creating a better future and being the best, sometimes I feel little things slipping away. So, today, I welcome monotony without guilt. I get off the bed and make myself the same rice and curry that fills not just my empty stomach but my heart too. I pick the age-old romance book from my shelf that I’ve probably already read 100s of times. I skim through the pages for my favorite scenes and let myself lose in the fictional world. I root for some characters and actively despise some even when I am well-acquainted with how the story ends. Reading it for the 101st time doesn’t make me love it any less, instead it makes me feel warm knowing it’s something I can always come back to. I get out of my house and walk around the park that’s been there for a few years now. I see children running and making their games as I inhale the scent that comes from the trees around me. It makes my heart relax knowing that my life could turn upside down at any minute, but still, there will be some things that will never change. The things that’ll hold memories of my good times and bad. I come across a familiar street food stall and sit on a chair. Sure, I’ve had newer and better food at other places but the familiarity that is served with this food is something I cannot buy somewhere else. After a while, I jog around the same areas I used to as before. Are there newer exercises I can try to make my routine interesting? Yes, but today is not the day for it. Running makes me feel like I am taking off and leaving the world behind me. I don’t want to replace that feeling with any other thing. I look around me, the vast green trees surrounding the valley and the sky in its bluest form. If there was no beauty within monotony, how do we explain the happenings of nature? The sun rises in the morning and leaves in the evening; the moon shines at night and the wind keeps blowing. The same occurrence for over a billion years still manages to make people swoon over them. The river follows the same path and looks the same but that doesn’t take a bit from its beauty. Nature thrives in its monotony. It doesn’t need to go out of its way to steal someone’s attention. It just does by solely existing. I take a break from running and sit on one of the benches. I plug in my earphones. I immediately scroll down to my favorite songs. Humming and sometimes mouthing the lyrics, I watch athletes on the ground. They do their same morning routines day after day. ‘Don’t they want something new in their life? Aren’t they tired of practicing for the same game over and over again? So why is it not sickening to them?’ I think as they run around the laps. It’s maybe because every time they repeat themselves, they know it’s not the same as it was. So, I wonder what is up with people running around trying to look for new things every day when they can take a breath and look around at the things that have always been there for them. Everything will get boring if you try to jump from one thing to other without fully letting yourself soak into it. Is monotony really the problem? Or is it the void within us that we try to fill in by pushing newer things into it at every chance we get? If only we take a proper look at ourselves, our mistakes, our good parts and the bad ones, then maybe we won’t have to run around aimlessly trying to fit into someone else’s version of our ideal selves, we will find beauty in the familiarity, that we will find beauty in monotony.
-Purnika Thapaliya
