Rhythm and Routine

Whenever I consider the significance of rhythm in my life I find myself thinking about breathing. About day and night. The movement of seasons. The phases of the moon. Ebb and flow of the tides, the booming of waves on the rocks below a beach-house where I lived for a while (and slept so deeply). Expansion and contraction. Openings and closures. Nodes and interstices. Out-reaching, in-gathering. Letting go and letting come. These constant movements, which are also shaping and forming… And immediately I notice we have a problem in contemporary life, which seems so arrhythmic. I see this is connected with stress.

The mystery of rhythm is its relationship with form. Rhythm gives shape even to time. We can’t really talk about rhythm without recognising boundaries — rhythm measures the movement between boundaries, and also across boundaries. There is an inside and an outside — a kind of membrane that pulses with life. “Form is the envelope of pulsation” (a Tantric saying).

I note two effects of living in rhythm, in time-space. One is that I am less exhausted. The other is that the moods of my soul are given shape and definition. Boundaries. When I consider this more deeply, I am convinced that rhythm facilitates a spacious relationship to experiences, and then other things may enter and ‘speak’.

"All gratification in life is founded on the regular reappearance of external things. The alternation of day and night, of the seasons, of flower and fruit, and everything else that confronts us at regular intervals so that we may, and should, enjoy it: these are the very springs of our daily life. The more openly we avow these pleasures, the happier we are. But if these phenomena revolve severally before us and we take no part in them, proving unreceptive to these precious gifts — then the greatest evil, the most dire sickness breaks out in us, and we look upon life as the most repulsive burden."

~ Wolfgang Johann von Goethe

Rhythm and routine then are sources of health — we rest in the familiar, the repetitive. Yet routine tasks can seem a burden, especially when you feel tired (as most parents do). Where does our distaste, our hatred even, of mundane work come from? Was it when you were forced as a child to do chores? Were you made to work as punishment? Or was it because you were scolded for just not getting it right? Even though you were simply trying to be helpful, was it because you were a ‘nuisance’? Whatever happened to that little child in you who loved imitating Mummy and Daddy, enthusiastically doing what they did? Somehow, work became a chore rather than a joy. And now, how can you find your way back into the Kingdom of Good Works? Recognising that rhythm and routine is good for you may not be sufficient motivation — what can rekindle that joy, that willingness?

~ Editorial to the Winter issue of { parent-theses }