My Losing Battle Against Monotony

Lately the days feel like the standardized output from an assembly line.  We’re stuck in the film Groundhog Day - but without Bill Murray’s quirky genius. 

My days follow the same general outline:

• Wake up. Savor a cup of coffee while watching the morning wake. 
• Hear my son’s barefooted trot down the hallway. Play trucks with him. 
• Feed our eager horses. 
• Eat breakfast with my wife and kids before sheepishly “commute”  to my desk. Feel a pang of remorse as I leave my wife to fend for herself in the jungle of virtual homeschool and three other cohabitants all under the age of 8.
• Write emails. Join Zoom Meetings. Shake my head at our bizarre new office.
• Hear my son’s request to go jump on the trampoline. I tell him I need to keep working. Guilt barges in and taunts me like an acne faced middle school bully. 
• Finish work. Commute through the door into the living room to the delight of my kids. 
• Eat dinner. 
• Zoom with friends or family. 
• Search Netflix for something to soothe the disconnected-disenchanted ailment that appears once my busyness slows. 
• Go to bed.

I convince myself monotony is the enemy hiding in the woods of social distancing. I fight him by walking across my backyard and setting up a “satellite office” in our shed.  I look out the window to a fresh view of greening grass and naive tree buds. You’d think I was on a beach in Fiji. For an hour I vacation in this 10x12 dream location free from interruption and full of novelty. I grin at my clever besting of my foe. But I know monotony is a tenant in my life that’s here to stay. 

 “Because children have abounding vitality, because they are fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again.’ And the grown-up person does it again until they are nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. 

But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening ‘Do it again’ to the moon.

It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately; but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”
-GK Chesterton 

Exult in monotony? No thanks, I’d rather fight it. 

And yet, there are other spaces in life where I willingly submit to monotony:

I crave the repetition of casting a fly rod. 
Time fades when I play basketball and practice my jumpshot.

I’ve done each thousands of times. The draw seems less about the actual task and more towards the deeper awareness that accompanies it....

 The layered landscape of light, river, stone, that I’m somehow part of 
The anticipation of the net’s snap after my form is correct and the ball leaves my hands. 

 I don’t have to think about where to stop my backcast or how much to bend my knees when I shoot a three pointer. The monotony of practice has created muscle memory that frees me to participate in God’s presence in the simple spaces of a river or asphalt court. Repetition enables recognition.  

 James Finley was right when he said, “repetition is not redundant.” For in submitting to the discipline of repetition we become familiar enough to look beyond the surface and see wonder unfolding. Maybe that's what it means to have the ‘eternal appetite of infancy.’ 

 Where has monotony dulled your awareness of wonder?
Where has repetition enabled recognition of God’s presence?

Jesse French
Restoration Project Chief of Next Steps