Monotony

One person who came to see me recently after hearing my everyday routine, asked me: ‘How can one live such a monotonous life without any change—with same food everyday [two times Ragi ball with dhal and almost same vegetable going week after week] not having some other things, same tea, same exercise, same reading, writing, walking and doing art work?’

In response I asked him: ‘Tell me in what way you live a different life without the same routine with monotony’?  In response he said that he will have different tiffin, snakes, coffee, or tea, go out, enjoy some other food in hotels etc. go and meet people, and have a variety of other activities but not like this kind of life that you live now as a recluse.

However, agreeing with him that some people need these kinds of verities to temporarily overcome monotony in life, still if he sits and analyzes them properly, they all are nothing but some other kinds of routine in life.

Of course I live a routine life without much change.  But creativity helps me to break monotony in my life.  When I read books, apart from learning and gathering knowledge [or information], as do cross stitch work.  Of course doing cross stitch is also another kind of routine.  But one difference in it is that when it unfolds before our eyes to bring the pattern alive, it gives some kind of joy and helps to break the monotony in life.  Similarly when I read books, again another kind of routine, but the way I get new information or the same point in a different perspective, that helps me to think which helps me to overcome any monotony in life.  What Mahatmaji wrote [in the context of hand-spinning  to make Khadi] about this is worth reading:

…All natural and necessary work is easy. Only it requires constant practice to become perfect, and it needs plodding. Ability to plod is swaraj. It is yoga. Nor need the reader be frightened of the monotony. Monotony is the law of nature. Look at the monotonous way the sun rises. And imagine the catastrophe that would befall the universe if the sun became capricious and went in for a variety of pastimes. But there is a monotony that sustains and a monotony that kills. The monotony of necessary occupations is exhilarating and life-giving. An artist never tires of his art….– Young India, 18-8-1921, CWMG, vol. 24, p. 111.