Our Ordinary Weekly To-Do Lists: Delights of the Ordinary No.46 (S2)

Our mundane boring habits and the neuroplasticity of our brains.

Delights of the Ordinary is for us who are trapped in the world of hustle culture but are quiet at heart with an itching creative bone. This newsletter intersects culture, art, science, and philosophy with our practical 9-5 job space.

The rising of the sun had made everything look so different - all colours and shadows were changed - that for a moment they didn’t see the important thing. Then they did.

- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

To see the important details in the ordinary habits. We miss it and then we see. Photo by Илья Косарев on Unsplash

Have you ever felt this?

When these weekly affairs become extensively repetitious, overly redundant and so genuinely boring that even a full-grown life feels puny and stunted. Like the Mondays of every week, like weekly grocery lists, like weekly washing of sheets, the weekly official reviews, the weekly deadlines and maybe this weekly newsletter showing up in your inbox!

For someone like me who has the tendency to be bored easily these weekly and daily jobs become such mundane stuff - such ordinary- that I fail to catch the glimpse of extraordinaire’ in them!

Each morning I wake up in hopes and dreams that today I will be like an advanced female version of Superman. In seconds my daily to-do routine will iron out all its creases by itself!

I will have ideas for a breakfast spread, and for lunch and then even for dinner. Then past in a minute, I will whip my ideas into meals. In two eye blinks my kitchen will be as clean as a whistle. My writing projects done! And in starry nights when I plonk on my pillow, I will smile a satisfying voluptuous smile, whispering soft goodnight to myself. Bliss! :)

Yet, the reality at my side of the world is this: I wake up with a yawning smug face, wiggling on my toes to enter the kitchen; then hurridly hunt the fridge for what may be my saving grace for that day. With the weekly grocery list and laundry pilling up and my writing assignments pending, to cater to family needs I conjure all my prowess to make some bland choices in the day. And bam! The day is over.

Even if they say that daily or weekly rituals or habits are like guided affairs they can be tremendously tedious, ultra anxious, slumping your shoulders and sending you to sleep.

Miss Stein gets up every morning about ten and drinks some coffee, against her will. She’s always been nervous about becoming nervous and she thought coffee would make her nervous, but her doctor prescribed it.”

- Alice B. Toklas on the daily routine of American poet Gertrude Stein

Isn’t that we all prefer our lives somewhat sombre and situated yet all the ordinary affairs done against our will just make it dull and dusty with the feeling of being undone!

So what do we do then?

First we get to know the science of our brains in formation of our humane habits. Next we look in the inside matters.

1. Our Brains are Plastic - The Science of Neuroplasticity

In modern science, we have enough evidence on the neuroplasticity of our brain which is our brain’s ability to change all through our life.

“A habit is a practice you repeat so regularly that it can be hard to change. This could be biting your nails when you’re worried, picking up a bottle of wine whenever you pass the liquor store, or cracking open a bag of chips while watching TV at the end of the day. A habit might even be unconscious, like jiggling your leg while you’re on a flight, or licking your lips when you’re forced to do some public speaking.”

Our brains seek quick satisfaction and rewards. When any habit - good or bad - gives us a reward or punishes us, our brain identifies the pattern and makes a neural pathway - a connection between the habit and the reward. It stores the information tidily in the space which also develops our emotions and memories but is not our conscious brain.

“Any habit we develop is because our brain is designed to pick up on things that reward us and punish us,” explains clinical psychologist and neuropsychologist Dr. Sanam Hafeez.

Hence, any chunk of our daily ritual which doesn’t fetch us a satisfactory reward of any sort like our to-do lists, our daily morning menace, piling laundry, or even showing kindness or speaking the truth; it turns out to be a painful ritual. And, this may be a good reason to know why we have such a hard time forming good habits or breaking the bad ones. Just because something feels good in that pulsing moment may not be good for us in the long run and something uneasy doesn’t mean dangerous always.

In all its practicality, forming good habits is always painful. The bad ones are the easiest. Because our brains -how much smart it is- wisdom is also a matter of heart.

“…there seems to be a disconnect between our clever brain and our compassionate heart. True wisdom requires both thinking with our head and understanding with our heart.”

Jane Goodall

2. Our Daily Rituals are for Our Inner Not Just for the Outer

Why Habits? The notion of having habits is to generate such daily or weekly rituals that would have the least cognitive burden on us and lead us to function in much freedom. Kevin Kelly writes that the “purpose of a habit is to remove that action from self-negotiation. You no longer expend energy deciding whether to do it. You just do it. Good habits can range from telling the truth to flossing…” or to my kitchen tasks, to your laundry pile or your office to-do’s.

Our habits, to-do’s or rituals, not merely make the outer structure of our world but they ought to reframe our inner world too. We do not merely make habits to live by but also closely catch life’s subtle details in those ordinary habits. To be able to draw out the finesse, playfulness, grace, and humour of the ordinary into our magnanimous lives.

That’s the key.

And in our kind of scorching hyper-speed living and unpurposeful internet scrollings the inner aspect of daily ordinary stuff easily withers and wilts. “What some might call the restrictions of the daily office they find to be an opportunity to foster the inner life… The different and the novel are sweet, but regularity and repetition are also teachers… The patterns of our lives reveal us. Our habits measure us. Our battles with our habits speak of dreams yet to become real.” writes famous poet Mary Oliver.

Our habits speak of dreams yet to become real!

Because “[h]abit is far more dependable than inspiration. Make progress by making habits. Don’t focus on getting into shape. Focus on becoming the kind of person who never misses a workout.”

That’s like catching the inner details of your outer work.

Yet in the compulsion of things, the habits sometimes hold us so tight opposing the very nature of what life is about - its flexible generative process.

And when I look around my own ordinary mundane affairs, called habit, I feel what a scrappy mess I am. Still, when I explore its inner worth I find that the magic lies in the mundane.

These ordinary mundane affairs are always cyclic, but almost out of sight, yet gleefully show up when we genuinely seek and desperately need them. Like weekly calls at home, Like the weekends, like Friday family movie night, like weekly catching with friends and then my weekly humble newsletter.

And even if Delights of the Ordinary may not be a blockbuster each week landing in your inbox, my hope is that it will always be there when you need some ordinary wisdom, some light through your thatched roof in your otherwise daily, weekly mercenaries or life!

Keep showing up. 99% of success is just showing up. In fact, most success is just persistence.

- Kevin Kelly

Now to my internet wanderings and as your online curator here are some fun reading stuff:

To Ponder: Whenever you have a choice between being right or being kind be kind. No exceptions. Don’t confuse kindness with weakness. - George Saunders

For Fun Scroll: This is a fun comic series of “Yes, But” by the Russian artist Anton Gudim. With the fun and puns of this comic series, he shows a “clever and insightful critique of modern society’s contradictions and absurdities.” Click here to see more.

gudim_public

A post shared by @gudim_public

To End:

I Worried by Mary Oliver

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?
Finally, I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.

Wishing you all peace and cooling showers in heaping measures.

See you next week.

- Anugrah

Delights of the Ordinary

Note: To you who have been my diligent reader, I am highly grateful for the time and room that you give me in your heart. For in some way or another letting me know that you are echoing along. So, if you ever feel like dropping in a message or a comment, do not hesitate. We all can only thrive in people. We can be those ordinary creative beings who can change the world. You and me. If you know even one person who will benefit from reading Delights of the Ordinary then feel free to share it with them.

---

Who am I?

Hi, I am Anugrah. I write Delights of the Ordinary for us who are trapped in the world of hustle culture but are quiet at heart with an itching creative bone and love for life. My newsletter intersects culture, art, and inner health in our practical 9-5 job space. Feel free to share.

---

Delights of the Ordinary currently is a free publication. Yet it takes me many hours of effort to write and curate it. I may need lots of coffee to keep me going. You can :)

---

Stumbled on my publication? Explore all my previous editions here. And in case you don’t wish to spend time browsing then complement this post with The Antidote for Self-Doubt, We Imagine Because We Are Living or read about Decision Fatigue and Our Creative Life.