I was once a rebel teen, this is episode 17.
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Hello and welcome back to the Rina Huntert Show.
Are people using this to walk? I hope you're going on a walk.
It's good, it clears your head.
But it can be boring to do the same thing every day, which brings me to the topic of the episode.
Which is the mundane.
The mundane, the boring times. The things that hit you over the head over and over.
The same sandwich every day. The same relationship for 30 years.
So come on, I mean, is it that mundane? I feel like you're fighting a lot at that point.
It could be pretty interesting.
Or maybe you love it. Maybe you're having a great time.
The mundane.
The first thought that comes to mind is that in the mundane lies discipline.
Because the mundane practice is mundane.
How do you get better at something? You do the same thing over and over.
Actually I was just watching a TikTok.
This podcast really outstripped me for how much I watch TikTok.
Let's not tell anyone, okay?
But I was watching a TikTok where they were like, the definition, you know,
the definition of insanity is not doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
That was just Einstein's definition of insanity.
And also that's also the definition of practice and getting better at something.
Which does feel like insanity because of how mundane it is when you go back to the piano, you know,
and you play and you try to get better every time you play your scales.
Scales. Even saying it is like, ugh, my scales.
But it could be fun.
But it is mundane and it's like going to the gym to work out.
It's like you're going, you push yourself to go.
It's like there's nothing really so stimulating about the activity other than that it's good for your body.
And you know, in the end it's stimulating.
But when you think about it, it's very mundane.
And there's just our whole day is filled up.
I mean, the more and more we forge our way into adulthood,
our whole day is made up of these little mundane topics, not topics, activities.
Well, they're also mundane topics.
I mean, we try not to talk about them unless you're Jerry Seinfeld and you can make them funny.
I'm working on it.
But our days are just filled with so many mundane tasks.
Do your laundry, wash your dishes, brush your teeth, make your bed.
Why did I do it in that voice?
Because that's how it feels.
It's like, meh, meh, meh, the boring thing.
I don't want to do that.
I want to go to Albania and like see the mountains, you know.
They're just whatever, something else, you know.
I want to look at something interesting.
I want to go somewhere new.
So yeah, it's hard.
But if you can face the mundane and you can make it magnificent,
then you've mastered discipline, haven't you?
Then if you can see yourself on a journey through all these mundane topics
to some perfected version of you.
Not perfected.
Let's not go for perfection.
But to some zen, leveled off version of yourself where nothing can shake you.
You're just kind of coasting on your life, getting everything you need done in a day
and loving it because your vibe is so good.
If you can make your vibe good, then the mundane can become miraculous.
Suddenly you're seeing all kinds of new and interesting things at the grocery store
or the laundry makes you think about the concept of replenishing and cleaning every week
or doing your dishes gives you a moment in time and space to clear your head
and make some epiphanies about where you're at in your life or what you want.
Or you sing while you do it and that feels nice.
So there can be beauty and mystery.
I mean, I would argue that all the beauty and mystery of life lies in, well not all of it,
but a lot of it lies in the mundane because it lies in the information
that our brains are filtering out about our reality.
We're just constantly filtering out the fact that we're in a really bizarre scenario of reality.
I mean, let's just start with the plant life.
You walk around, especially in LA and everything's in bloom
and the flowers are kind of smelling you.
They're just right there and they're alive.
And you walk right by because you're in your head space of like,
I'm going to get a light bulb.
Boring.
But all around you, you basically live in Oz.
There's mysterious people everywhere with their little lives and their little stories
or their big stories.
Maybe they're big people.
But there's just a lot going on around you that your brain is filtering out
and creating the space for the mundane for you.
And why?
Because, well, the mundane is reliable.
The mundane is safe.
The mundane is predictable.
I mean, I think a lot of us saw this during lockdown where the world was kind of on fire.
So we resorted to like really boring stuff that made us feel safe,
like baking bread and watching old movies and just curling up with something comforting,
something homey, something basic.
And that can be a good kind of anchor for your own stability is just let's just do the basics.
Let's not even worry about some big tidal wave of where our lives are going.
Let's just, because the basics are hard, especially if you're in a down part of your life.
The mundane things can feel like you're climbing Mount Everest.
How am I going to get out of my bed?
How am I going to brush my teeth today?
Well, you're going to do it one little step at a time.
I sound like that therapist from What About Bob with the baby steps,
if you know what I'm talking about.
If not, watch that movie, it's crazy.
You're going to do it.
And so there can be kind of a relief in being like, I don't need to figure out the world.
I don't need to fix everything around me.
I just need to get the basics done right now.
And that's and just allowing the mundane to be good enough.
It's scary to allow the mundane to be good enough because of your ego.
Your ego wants your life to be bigger than doing laundry.
What are you doing with your life?
Oh, you're just paying your bills and and and keeping your apartment clean.
You know, there's this voice in your head that keeps saying you have to be more than that or you want to be more than that.
And without acknowledging that like that, those are really difficult tasks that some people never figure out for their entire lives.
And being bored and having these moments of just mundane, if you can lean into the safety of it,
it allows your mind a kind of calm and a kind of space for inspiration to hit that maybe, you know,
when everything's busy and you're being overstimulated,
there wouldn't be room for the still small voice to chime in and say, hey, let's make a movie about Star Wars or whatever.
So it does allow you the space for inspiration and new ideas because our brains are always craving novelty.
So it's like even if we make things very mundane and we make our peace with that,
our minds, our imaginations are going to come up with some very interesting stuff just on their own.
Why do we crave novelty?
It seems really strange that we would when so much of what we need to do is repetitive,
which I think the reason it used maybe would have been easier in other times or other places to do the mundane is that we would have been doing them communally.
There just would have been more of a village aspect, I think, to doing all of these things,
tanning the leather or whatever people used to do.
You do it as a group and sing your song about doing it while you did it.
And I think it would become this kind of like hypnotic habit, the group habit that you could just come into and do together.
And that sounds so nice. That sounds so nice.
But yeah, I think we crave novelty because if you do too much of the same thing every day,
it's not it's not leading your body to be an optimal condition.
Like case in point, if you eat the same thing every day, you're in danger of getting scurvy.
You need variety in your diet. You need variety in your activities to keep your brain stimulated.
It's always about a balance. It's always about a balance.
Like, yeah, I actually did hear about a man once who got divorced from his wife and she was always the excuse me.
She was always the one who was like preparing the meals, coming up with the ideas for the meals.
And he just got really depressed after the divorce.
And he just went to the same restaurant every day and ate the same thing every day.
And he did. He got scurvy. He got scurvy and he had to go to the hospital.
So, yeah, the mundane is safe, but it's also can can become a prison.
So it's like, oh, you have to find that balance and figure out how to break out of the mundane if it's becoming overwhelmingly.
I don't know. I was just picturing one of those things that people wear in the nuthouse.
Can I call it that? A straight jacket. If the mundane becomes a straight jacket for you, you've got to break free.
And, you know, I think a lot of great movies are about people breaking free from the straight jacket of the mundane because their habits have just become this plotting rhythm is urging them on towards their eventual demise and death.
On the other hand, communally or not communally as a country, when things are mundane, when things are calm, when things are comfortable and we just have all the basics met and everything's all right.
To me, that symbolizes peacetime.
And maybe our craving for always novelty, always new, always paving the way is part of what stands in the way of us achieving world peace that we always need to conquer.
And we always need to grow and grow. Not that growing is bad, but maybe there is a certain a certain point where we need to reevaluate where that instinct is taking us and make sure that we're pointing it in the right direction.
Because the mundane, at a certain point, can give you great peace.
You.