to make the mundane interesting

By Monday, things were starting to feel mundane.  It is hard for me to conclude on what type of person I am.  On one hand, I have always desired a routine, a set schedule, a circle of friends who would always, always be there.  I like organization, and I love making lists.  But then there is the other me.  The person who wants to constantly be somewhere exotic, tasting new things, observing new people in settings I’ve never before experienced, attempting activities I haven’t tried previously. 

I just finished reading Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coehlo (thank you to my friend, Whitney, for the recommendation).   Without giving too much away, the book centers upon a young girl in her twenties, living in Slovenia, who decides to take too many sleeping pills so she doesn’t have to live anymore.  She does live though, and awakens in a mental hospital where she is told that she has severely damaged her heart and does not have more than a week to live.  Realizing that death is imminent, and that she has nothing to lose, Veronika experiences things that she hadn’t before permitted herself.  She no longer weighs her existence on what other people think of her, and she allows herself to feel true hatred, and true love, and ultimately realizes that the life she previously had wanted to extinguish is worth living after all.  

It is a lovely and thought-provoking story, and it helped me to work out the restlessness I was feeling.  Instead of feeling sorry for myself because of the monotonous aspects of my current situation, I should instead change what I can.  So instead of going on Facebook this week, I’m taking the time to read some books I wanted to read.  Last night, instead of filling up my time after work with the usual, and then scrounging something cheap up for dinner, I decided to go home and make (and subsequently demolish) a delicious Gouda and red salad pizza with a friend, and then read a good book and fall asleep early.  It was different, and that was nice.  What I’m clumsily trying to say, is that you don’t have to do what everyone wants you to do!  Go to the movie alone if you’d like.  Talk to that interesting person you see every morning as you walk to work.  Tell the people you love that you love them and stop caring about how they will respond.  Step outside the box society has created, and the mundane can become interesting again.  It’s such a simple, but important lesson to grasp.  It is not necessary to change locations to experience something new in our surroundings.