All hail the morning routine

I recently came across a question that I couldn’t stop thinking about: which do you value more, routine and security, or novelty and adventure? In a world that obsesses over morning routines and adventure in the same measure, what is it we crave more?

I wake up at the same time most days, I make the same cup of morning coffee and spend the same time in bed reading my book before going to work. I do my weekly grocery shop every Monday. I go to the same Yoga class, and I go to the same coffee shop. I love my routine. I depend on my routine. I draw strength from my routine.

That is not to say I don’t crave novelty and adventure. If anything, what I love is going to new places to build new routines. When I moved to England, I was excited to get to know a new culture, new ways of thinking, new places to go to. But I was also excited to build a new life, a new routine, from scratch. What kinds of food I’d make, what coffee shops I’d make my own, how I’d live my everyday.

I think it’s easy to brush over the beauty of the everyday, of the routine. Being part of the morning rush into the office, everyone heading into work at the same time, standing in cue for coffees. Catching up with colleagues on TV shows you watched the night before. Cooking dinner, chopping onions, the smell of food. All the small things that make up a day, the good and the bad. We take them for granted, but they could be taken away from us at any moment.

My routine is an illusion I create to feel safe. It isn’t fixed; I have control over it. I can change it. And I love changing it, I love moving to a new place or travelling. I love meeting new people and encountering ideas that challenge me and my set ways. I am not immune to change, I crave it. In this way, I value novelty and adventure over routine. It is what makes me feel alive, what teaches me new things, what allows me to live off those memories in darker times.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is what I value most is being torn out of my routine by novelty and adventure but having a routine to be torn out of in the first place. And being able to build a new one. Because that is how we make our lives our own.