500 Words a Week - The Middling Zone of the Mundane
When trying to establish our path forward, advice I’ve always enjoyed is trying to notice what brings you joy, what excites you, and what invigorates you. You then use these signs as a map to guide you toward what you ultimately want to do or what resonates more with you.
On the other end, we also have the path of not here. In being open to the negative signs of what we don’t enjoy, and understanding what rids us of our energy we gain further insight into what it is we definitely don’t want to do.
There’s a dangerous middle zone that we must be aware of. In this zone there is nothing overtly negative going on in our life, yet there is also nothing overtly positive or joy inducing. This zone can bring a false sense of comfort as we think “well nothing major is going wrong or right”, so we do nothing. An absence of signs, be that positive or negative, is a sign in itself. If you find yourself wandering on autopilot throughout your life, you might be in this zone. It’s a trap, providing us with a false sense of security. As we become comfortable in this zone, we stop trying to make the very changes in ourselves or our life around us that would bring us joy.
The situation isn’t negative enough for us to actively seek change or try to improve. Yet at the same time it’s not providing us any joy, so we are just stuck in this zone of the mundane, wasting away our time. Almost waiting for things to get worse until we make a change or adjustment. This is similar to the region beta paradox in behavioural science, which somewhat describes the above. It references how we will endure the “not so bad” rather than seeking change, and only upon our situation getting noticeably worse will we actively look to change.
If we aren’t aware of this, we start living the same year over and over again, as our life drifts by us never to return. Facing the same problems, complaining about the same issues, never actively trying to change our situation as we are in a place of comfortable complacency. Enduring a life of it’s “not so bad”.
Eventually if we continue this way we will reach a point of inward calamity. We will suddenly wake up and realise we spent the last however many years chasing something that didn’t bring us joy, or living a life we don’t feel attuned with.
We need to be honest with ourselves. We need to stop hiding the fact that something might not feel right. The first step towards bringing ourselves out of this place is becoming aware that we are in it in the first place.
