Magic And Tedium
There is a place where few people go. At least, very few of my hours are spent there, so I assume other’s also rarely find it…
That place is what the great Fernando Pessoa calls ‘Tedium’. It’s that magical place where possibility meets perfectly with one’s reality; the imagination finds the body; the dream finds the ordinary; the abstract makes loves with the mundane.
It’s a warm place. Everything in the body enjoys itself. It’s a bubble of stories made all by oneself, and one truly and terrifically believes in each and every one of them. It’s almost a tragedy to act them out… to destroy one’s ideas by too fully experiencing them…
When I spontaneously run a marathon one weekday afternoon it is from this place exactly! I’m in that territory of pointlessness. Of freedom. Of play, and of joy. When one is truly being held by reality (or rather by what one makes of it) then remarkable things happen…
Here’s my Magical Tedium checklist to help you see if (and when) you may or may not be in Pessoa’s sweet spot:
1) Are you performing something (anything) for the joy of doing it, with little or no thought of the eventual outcome?
2) Would you behave the same way if nobody else knew you were doing it?
3) Are you in control of your own destiny in this moment / during this day? (You’re not relying on external things happening)
4) Would you be totally okay if this was your last day on Earth? (Could you quite conceivably spend your last day in this way and be at peace with it)
5) Does it feel really really good!? (most importantly of all)
What might happen if you were somehow able to drop all expectations of yourself? If the list of identities you attached to could disappear? If you knew what was ACTUALLY good for yourself? (and therefore for others)…
Tedium is what happens when you let your own pleasure, your own freedom, reign supreme. When you really do, say, feel, communicate, perform in whatever way simply FEELS GOOD.
It’s the hardest thing to do in the world. Truly.
There are no rule books for such a thing. No guide. No religion. No teachers. No course. No measuring stick even.
Indeed… my 5 point checklist is as failed an attempt as any other.
The greatest things in the world are no longer great when planned, dissected, squeezed out of every drop. There is no running schedule that works… trust me… i’ve tried them all (nearly).
I know… it sort of sucks… and it doesn’t make sense.
But that’s also good… because it’s not supposed to.
It’s only when I’m so absorbed in that magical place of memory, of music, of the imaginative mind, of movement, of relationship, of love, that I decide to go running, or to laugh, or smile, or sing along to pop music.
What a terribly beautiful accident the whole thing is!
And yet would we have it any other way?
Perhaps not…
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