Monotony of routines interrupts self-discovery

Relief from habitual life, escaping comfort zones promotes personal growth

By: Paul Bowers

Posted: 10/29/07 - Pleading the fifth

I will confess, I am a creature of habit.

Nearly every day, I eat a bowl of dry cereal for breakfast and a peanut-butter-and-honey sandwich for lunch. I go running at the same speed in the same places. I drink the same drinks, wear the same clothes, read my Bible at the same time and place. My days have an established rhythm.

Recently, though, I have begun to wonder: What is the value of these habits? Am I really better off sticking to what I know? It's like I've locked my life into a holding pattern. I'm only a few months into college, and already I'm acting like a retired person.

The times I truly enjoy, though, are the ones when I'm doing something unexpected or out of the ordinary: mission trips, random city adventures, late-night drum circle sessions with perfect strangers. These are also the times when I learn the most about myself and the world.

So why the strict patterns? Everybody seems to have them, whether they only walk on certain sidewalks or only talk with certain friends. For some of us-myself included-it would seem that a shaking-up would work wonders.

If I think of myself as an Etch-a-Sketch, then I know that it is necessary to shake my surface clean from time to time and doodle something new. This does not mean deserting my friends; it does not mean quitting the things that are important to me. What it means is a periodic break from the norm.

I have been consciously working on this for months now. The impetus may have been, oddly enough, an act of vandalism. Back home, there is a deserted shopping center that I used to pass frequently when I went running. The local graffiti community has turned its back wall into a canvas of sorts, and there, stretching across maybe forty yards of cinder blocks, is a quote in purple spray paint: "To be truly human is to be constantly exploring."

I was struck by its profundity and by what it means for me-someone who rarely explored things as much as he felt he should.

Since then, I have taken a few steps to break myself free from my own routines. I started listening to jazz. I ate sushi. I sat and talked with a guy playing a Russian folk instrument in the Horseshoe.

I plan to study abroad when I can, but there is so much left to explore where I live. I am reminded of a middle school science teacher who told me that, while we point our telescopes to the far reaches of the universe, there is still quite a bit that we have yet to understand in the depths of our own oceans.

Let's dive deep.