Tonight, as is usually the case on Friday nights, I will sit at home grading while most people are out carousing. Friday is my busiest day of the week, and by the time I leave work on Friday during the semester, I have been on the clock for 52 hours and away from home due to work or work related activities for more than 60 hours. Add up the fact that I try to exercise eight times per week and that all the household work including shopping, cleaning, etc., falls on me, and by Friday night I’m exhausted. After work, I play racquetball, stop by the store on the way home, and then make a light dinner, watch a show I miss on Thursday because I’m in class, and just relax for hiking the next morning. It sounds pretty boring.
Several of the women I dated accused me of being boring. They wanted someone who would fill their life with excitement and variety and fun. What they do not realize is that adulthood comes with responsibilities. I cannot simply leave work at 1030AM on Tuesday and go cliff jumping. If the battery on my car dies, our “date night” might be transformed into accompanying me to the store to buy a new one so I can get to work in the morning. Bills must be paid, my employer expects me to arrive for work, and the household chores rely on me or a maid for which I am unwilling to pay. Especially when you add children to the mix, we add laundry and lunches and extracurricular activities, and that fills up life with a lot of routine activities.
I enjoy the familiarity of the routine. Most of my routine was selected because it includes things that I either enjoy or with which I am comfortable. I keep my routine because I like the ends to which it leads. I like eating well and feeling well from exercise. I nurture friendships while hiking and family relationships with weekly dinner. I work extra because I find some of the students actually learn, and if I transform their lives, then it has been useful work. I clean the toilet and shower because then I’m actually clean when I bathe and eliminate. For most things and people I am pretty inflexible when it comes to routine because most of those ventures turn out to be fishing expeditions that lead to places I prefer to avoid or to nowhere at all.
Apparently young people do not fully realize they are doing the same things and calling it living it up. They go out and do the same thing every weekend or every summer with the same people, but because they meet new people or visit new haunts, they call that “variety”. Far too many of them use “spontaneity” as an excuse to avoid having to keep their commitments. One could say that I prefer to plan, so much in fact that I say betimes that I prefer to have my spontaneity planned well in advance! In the case of those whose parents still subsidize their expenses, they remain largely free from the obligations of buying food, gas, and clothing beyond the impulses they buy in addition to their needs. They certainly have less of an obligation to meet bills, pay mortgages, maintain their cars, and clean their own homes if mom the maid does it for them.
All of us I think look forward to excitement. The paradox of that is that we all seem happy to return home from vacation. There is something comforting about sleeping in our own bed, using our own toilet, and returning to the mundane. We like it because it is routine. We know what to expect, and so that helps us to PLAN. Living in the moment sounds fun unless you’re a homeless vagrant who knows not where he’ll lay his head or from whence his next meal might come. Being free and spontaneous has a dark side that we all know but that some of us refuse to acknowledge.
We romance excitement because we know routine. However, if excitement becomes the norm, it also becomes the new routine. I know some young folks who work in the entertainment industry, and those with an iota of intellect find it dull because they MUST do it. Partying has become their routine, and sometimes they find it difficult to put on a happy face and pretend that it’s just as fun for them as the clients who come to escape the routine of adulthood.
What we put into our routine tells us what matters to us. We will find time or make time for things that matter even when urgent distractions arise. Not that something doesn’t matter at all because we don’t make time, but it simply indicates that other things matter more. Eventually we either learn to be responsible and accept the routine of adulthood or we expect others to continue to take care of things for us, and that is adolescent.
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