Rage Spread Thin

“Boredom is rage spread thin.” –Paul Tillich

“The monotony of life,” a phrase found somewhere in a Buddhist book years ago, has taken me years to fully come to terms with.  At the time, I was puzzled and, unaccountably, offended by it.  As it turns out, at the beginning of my 57th year, it seems to me that life essentially does come down to rote at some point–fish on Monday, burgers on Tuesday; accept a promotion, decline a promotion; go to work every day; go to sleep at the same time every night; think essentially the same thoughts over and over.  It’s tedious and sometimes an enormous chore to get up each morning, knowing how each day will plod along.  How I will plod along through it.

Every day, I remember to be grateful for the gift of mockingbirds bathing in a sprinkler, for a soulless job that I do not want but that many others would, for the generosity of spirit in others.  Somehow it’s not enough to counteract the ennui that wraps me in a kind of straitjacket.  The monotony of life….

It seems there should be some kind of escape, though I reject the au courant popular concept of a “bucket list.”  Popular culture may have a list, but the idea of a series of special events that one dreams of accomplishing before checking out seems a little pathetic to me.  As if the recognition that I inhabit an endless haze of infinite boredom is somehow intellectually superior, a more courageous and harder look at this dream we inhabit.

Even these words I’ve just written, these thoughts, are old and familiar to me now.  They’re rote concepts, made more exotic by the incisive commentary I offer here.  I define myself by them.  Yes, I see more clearly than others; I’m brutally frank with  myself about the sheer pointlessness of my existence.  How like me to believe it, how like I have always been.

Where to end this?  Ah…the monotony of life.

 

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