“The monotony of life contains a reservoir of ways to find relief, if we can only muster the courage and energy to dive in instead of opting out. If today you find yourself bored with your work—perhaps surfing around and reading some random essay on happiness—you may have just gotten a signal from the universe that it’s time for your spirit to evolve.” — Arthur C Brooks, “Kierkegaard’s Three Ways to Live More Fully”, The Atlantic

Within the rhythm of living our lives, we may get stuck in a routine that strikes us as boring. Same menu for dinner, same commute, same seat at the same desk we’ve sat in front of for long enough that the thrill of new is long gone. What are we to do in such moments? Change everything? Paint the entire inside of the house again? Get another dog? Travel to faraway places that are fresh and new and distinctly different in every way from the norm? Perhaps. There’s a time for such changes in a lifetime. But there’s also a time for staying put and wrestling with the restlessness of routine by looking inward.

There’s a secret in blogging every day different from, say, journaling. It’s a daily reconciliation of the writer with the blank page that must be transformed into something substantial. Like each day itself, we are faced with making something of it when we begin again each morning. What is interesting in the universe today? What have we encountered that is a distinct step away from from boring? What surprises and delights us? Scratch that itch and see where it takes us.

I write this savoring the last of a magnificent cup of coffee. It’s the first of the day, and truly, I hate to see it end. Sure, a second cup is just around the corner should I need it, but it isn’t about having more and more, it’s about savoring what I have in the moment. Sometimes that’s more than enough to carry the day.

If this sounds like a retreat from the pursuit of rich experience, let me assure you that’s it’s just the opposite. We can’t run from one thing to the next without diving deeply into the experience we’re having at the moment. That’s not immersing ourselves in living a rich life, that’s nothing but a buffet of casual indulgences. Empty calories that we may come to regret one day. ’tis better to choose our daily diet of experience with an eye towards a more nutrient-rich, enlightening way.

As Brooks points out in the article linked above, Kierkegaard recommend immersion in pursuits of substance like reading, meaningful relationships and our life’s work. Lectio Divina, or divine reading, is not just reading something, but following the steps of lectio (reading), meditatio (meditation), contemplatio (contemplation), and oratio (prayer). We may naturally adapt this methodology to our lives beyond reading: That cup of coffee has been consumed, savored, reflected upon and expounded upon. Isn’t that a better life experience than absent-mindedly sipping it to empty and realizing afterwards that you forgot to savor it?

Blogging isn’t just documenting everything that we stumble upon in this life, but taking those steps of participating in it, immersion, contemplation and finally, talking about it (oratio). This process may not feel efficient in a multi-tasking, harried world, but it’s surely a better way to live. When we break ourselves of the need for constantly new entertainment for the senses, we learn to live more and savor the moment at hand. We find that what we have isn’t at all boring, but something to dive deeper into.