The Indignant Adaptation.

The past few days have felt incredibly mediocre.

I know when I wake each morning, that a part of me cycles through the day’s tasks ahead, and I manage the routine I’ve already laid out in my head for the hours to come. I sometimes force myself to make haste and just “get on with it,” and the day ahead, regardless of how appealing the comfort and warmth of the bed and my room feels around me, against me. These are the mediocre days; the days when you feel everything rejects your touch, breaks around your presence, becomes its own opposite to spite you. Days where you’re basically left with the feeling of being better off back in bed, just before waking, somewhere still asleep and dreaming.

I personally connect a lot of my mediocre feelings and days with an overwhelming sense of routine and personal responsibility toward tasks at hand, and those in the future I am so present and aware of, despite their somewhat relative distance. There is a part of me which feels obliged to dedicate itself to things I can almost manage, and then not manage well enough once they arrive. I am quick to assert my responsibility with family, school, friends, and relationships in general. Some things I put off, I put them off until they can’t be put off any longer, and by this point, they’ve grown so big not only in my mind, but in reality as well, as to seem impossible to manage, and I grow anxious, crave retreat, and stagnate.

The idea of overburdening responsibilities is one I see reflected in many lives I know, and come in contact with. It’s an area I’m somewhat torn about; being selfless verses selfish. There’s a balance there, somewhere; I’ve seen other people manage and task everything successfully, so much so that even emotionally they seem…routine. I wonder if this is the sacrifice you make for balance in any life; one in which you aren’t emotionally attached or invested -as deeply- to the things you take on. Would this read like a life more in passing than one actually lived? Maybe.

All of these thoughts were slightly encouraged by an article I read, titled “The Eco and The Id” in which Ecopsychology is discussed:

“…the premise is that we operate under an illusion that people are separate from nature, and that humans are more apt to derive comfort and even inspiration from contact with the natural world — with which they evolved over the millennia — than with the relatively recent construct of modern urban society. Distancing ourselves from nature, [Theodore] Roszak maintains, has negative psychological consequences for people and also leads to ecological devastation at the hands of a society that, as a result, lacks empathy for nature.”

I titled this article under “things that resonate,” in my “ideascrap journal” because the parts of me that breathe and live, create and want, agree very strongly with the idea presented above. I’ve had several personal experiences which reinforce this for me, and I know family and friends who would agree entirely as well.

When I think about my routine, my tasks, my responsibilities, there are times when it overwhelms me. There are times when I wish to disconnect, to retreat, not only inside myself or from other people, but to -flee-. I’ve often written about how all the technology advances we have, despite affording us many means of connection, have left us so -disconnected- and unable to truly connect with one another. This pains me as an emotional human being; the sense of alienation I get when meeting new people so entirely unaware of the “world” (as an emotional, physical, and breathing thing; the world outside of TV, internet, and video games) makes me want to retreat to a place I know I can be and remain untouched. I don’t want to be plugged in, hooked up, on alert, and alerted, all the time. I want to talk, I want to walk, I want to feel sun on my face and cold on my skin. I want to know what dusk sounds like on the beach when the rest of the world is in front of their tv’s abandoning a place that only seems to be rewarding for them when it suits.

I wake up some mornings, get in my car, and talk myself out of driving to another state with only an overnight bag.

This happens a lot. I want to -flee- a lot. I want to disconnect, I want to put these “meaningless things” away, walk out of my front door, leave my responsibilities here, and wonder off into the wild.

But I don’t go. I wait for moments of pure natural serenity. I wait for escape, for The Adirondacks, for Valley Forge Park, for the beach at dusk, for every natural moment I can grasp and squirrel away; something from which I can recall a piece to carry me through all of this routine, this mechanical-ness, something that can remind me -I am not mechanical-.