Hello Friends,
Every morning, I have the same routine: I wake, get a medium-sized dark roast coffee at my favorite cafe, and walk along the harbor as the sun rises. When I return home, I continue my day as I look at email (mostly newsletters), work on the daily crossword from the local paper, and try to write some stuff.
Then, around 9 AM, I go to my “desk” and work my “job” for 8 hours. I almost always finish the day in front of the TV (finally, it’s hockey season again) until I get sleepy enough to go to bed.
Every day, pretty much, the same pattern. Different sun rises. Sometimes I get a scone with my coffee. But mostly exactly the same day-in, day-out.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my morning habits. They are vital to keeping my soul alive (although I should slide some meditation in there). My lovely wife is with me for most of it.
We are incredibly lucky to live in such a beautiful place, to have an awesome cafe with delicious coffee, and to have made casual and supportive friendships with people we see every day.
Everything that happens after I walk up the stairs to sit at my desk for my workday is how I can afford to live and keep our cats in extreme comfort. I am fortunate to have that in my life, too, no matter how stressful, frustrating, and absolutely soul-sucking it is.
And, to top it all off, science has shown that routines are healthy and can give us a longer life. Yay, me!
This morning, on my way to get coffee, I thought about last week’s newsletter on time crystals: hypothetical materials that repeat a pattern in time at their lowest energy.
I don’t think it would take much imagination to view my existence as a type of time crystal, particularly when you consider I have changed little in over a year, except grown older in time.
There is no judgement here. No self-deprecation. I have a blessed life. I often express gratitude for it.
What I’m really pondering is the part of a crystal that has to do with a system (and me?) expressing its crystalline state at its lowest energy.
People talk about things settling down. About someone settling into a situation or a relationship. These are times of reduced chaos. (Oliver Berkman would suggest that, thanks to Hofstadter’s Law, there is never a time of no chaos, so you might as well get used to it—but that is another email.)
Settling is not only acceptance of a situation one can’t change but also an act of letting energy dissipate, as in the dust settles.
It makes me wonder if I have become a crystal, a hardened object at my lowest energy?
In life, it is so easy to let one day follow another, like dominoes cascading across the floor. Have I let my routines define my life?
I think it’s easy to pass each day telling yourself that you are “waiting”—waiting for your next vacation, for the holidays, for a new opportunity to present itself.
And the wait becomes the life—the crystal.
The way to break a crystal is to inject energy. To smash it or heat it up or subject it to pressure.
Do I even want to do this?
Is it okay to be a time crystal?
A time crystal repeats, but it repeats with motion. It’s cyclical to the extreme, but it’s not static. It flows with time, in a safe, stable, repeating sequence.
Time crystals have a self-sustaining energy that simultaneously feeds it and is released by it. We humans literally glow.
So perhaps it’s not important whether the energy you release to the universe (and those around you) comes from a time crystal-like routine or something else.
What does your lowest state of energy look like? What does it contribute to the universe?
Happy writing, happy reading, happy moving.
David
David, what a fine post! I believe some routines are essential; otherwise, how would we get things done? My father always said: Little by little. You've written several novels, so I imagine some sort of routine made that possible (especially if you have a demanding day job). The best way to start my day is to get up and get outside, preferably before 7 am. That hour spent with the rising sun and nature is so much more than a jump start.