days without form: finding fluidity beyond rituals

on allowing a day to flow without plans or routines — how time feels like water.

I started practicing the morning routine the year after graduating college — in 2015 — and slowly, over five years, it become my most important organizing principle for inner grounding; giving rhythm and structure and order to my otherwise chaotic world. the three basic elements of my morning routine (meditation, writing, yoga) became more than a ritual. they were practices that formed my vessel. my morning routine, like a metal cloths-hanger over which I hung a single day, and thus — like this — my entire life.

this weekend, like most weekends, I gave myself permission to break the routine. I did very rebellious things — like staying in bed for three hours redesigning this website (do you like it???) and then, reading this book while laying on my stomach in the living room. I noticed that when I let go of all expectations for having completed X activity before Y time, my relationship to time changed completely. it felt elastic. fluid. watery. it was no longer solid, sliced up and tightly packaged into fifteen minute increments. it felt spacious.

how did it happen? very simple. rather than following my usual sequence of activities, I paused for a moment in between things and simply asked my innermost self:

what wants to happen now?

what do I feel like doing now?

I’ve written about this in the past — living with no plans. I’ve long given up planning out my week, and since beginning to travel, I’ve abandoned planning the day. to be honest, I had an unhealthy relationship to planning — it was simply a way of managing my fear of uncertainty.

so I guess it’s a sign of evolution, then, that now I am totally content — and present with — uncertainty in smaller and smaller units. there is uncertainty in life. in a year. in a month. in a week. in a day. and, in a single moment. that uncertainty in a moment is the very thing which can make the moment magical. when you pause to ask yourself: what wants to happen in this moment — and simply listen and allow yourself to discover, rather than dictating how you should feel or act, life feels suddenly feels spacious and mysterious. fluid. I think this is the way that life is meant to feel.

and the metal cloths-hanger is always there, when I need it.