On Routine

I am slightly cautious with being accustomed to routine because it seems to deny some measure of my autonomy. It is a strangely liberating feeling - although to some, unsettling - to wake up to a series of substantive decisions that have yet to be made, which as a matter of probability would never in its fulfilment recreate a day adequately similar to the previous day, or to the same day of the previous week. Conversely, routines are, in effect, restrictions on the choices you might make over the course of time. 

This is of course a rather narrow conception of routine, and much turns upon how scrupulous its provisions are. Further, even the most spontaneous or disorganised people live within minimal habitual boundaries, the most patent of which would be eating and sleeping. One simply has to do so, preferably in a routinely manner, to stay alive.

The difference, I suppose, is that these habitual restrictions on the course of one's life in a day are fundamentally involuntary. By contrast, a daily routine to most of us probably means a sequence of actions or procedures regularly followed that we constructed on our own, for our purposes. Another way of putting it is that rather than merely taking momentary decision-making out of your own hands, a routine is simply making those decisions in advance. Now this surely is no restriction on autonomy, is it? In fact it is a more sophisticated manner of exercising it. 

Barring any deterministic objection (which this note is not meant to address), I think the real question is perhaps why we value the concept of autonomy, especially in relation to its practical out-workings. Much can be said, but for now, the most penetrating analysis must come from James, who wrote,

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. (James 4:13-17 ESV)

In gist, I think the short answer is that autonomy is not designed for the preservation and attainment of personal agenda, attractive as that may sound. It is nevertheless a legitimate volitional principle but what it expresses is one's capacity for true obedience to divine agenda. Consequently, I suppose, biblical autonomy enshrines above all the need for a constant, regular, if not, at least routine, searching for what the Lord wills. 

Resolutions

The term has sung its last note. Its end colours the turn of the season, and vice versa. If there is one thing I have learnt, it is that resolutions in the negative, that is, beginning with I will not, only empty over time, like autumnal branches and their radiant but disloyal associates. Negative resolutions are not true resolutions, for a renunciation on its own is like a departure without a destination. Even wanderlust is, to an extent, decidedly purposive. But like wintry days are an invitation to bide one's vigour for the promise of spring and beyond, my resolutions, I hope, will cease to be holdovers of past sins but instead become ends towards a greater end.

A Scent

A scent is a breath of love,
warm and laced with the dew
            of tired lips,
            simmering and escalating.

A scent is soluble affection;
no more chemical than love,
            invisible, and best not
            studied nor synthesised.

A scent is a pensieve breeze
which in its wake demands
            a journeyer's courage
            and a curious mind.

A scent caresses,
and awakens a game
            of feral pursuit
            and velvet words.

A scent is a girl in a bottle
            who escapes because she cannot be contained.

Forgive Me

It is equally if not more difficult to accept forgiveness than it is to forgive. That is because it involves a self-reckoning of one's trespass, and that of the virtue of the pardoner, who for what is worth has on other occasions lapsed in his own honour but at present stands trustily. It is even more difficult when he has not, or is kind and just, or both. The uncloaking of one's fallen nature to face the stainless hope of redemption therefore requires nothing less than a miracle of the heart and will. As Herbert Prochnow rightly counter-quoted, "To err may be human, but to admit it isn't." Humility, it seems, is humanity's rarest and most precious trait.

Protecting the Good

It might be said that a public servant is one whose duty is to protect the public good and whose creed is sworn singularly unto the culture within which it wishes to thrive. To complicate matters, "good" is almost always defined by culture, which in our day and age has been prone to leave generous room for definitions of any sort; this might in fact be the only "good" - in its own entitlement - consistently defined and practiced (although not consistently logical). This unfortunately makes it hard for anyone to decide what, if at anything all, to protect. It was therefore of little surprise to me today, when I had the honour of conversing with an eminent public servant, to discover that he was fundamentally an ardent disciple of John Dewey, whose thought (ironically), as one writer put, had aimed not at fixing the belief but at fixing the situation.

The important man still unflinchingly garners my deepest respect, and I suppose the culture - or any culture - survives because of selfless people like him who loyally heed its creed. But more than that, as we appoint and anoint to protect the public good, how much more shall we thus defend and debate the concept of "good" itself, to protect it too, and any hope of meaning at all?

Song and Sense

Music aside, good songs tend to make sense while bad songs don't. Even after navigating a slew of awkward diction ("I love my...closest ties") and strange grammar ("Mornings, I wake up, refreshed..."), I'm still left wondering what in the world "love at first light" even means. It doesn't help that the lyricist is a renowned local poet. So today we still find "Home" the homeliest. The reason may escape our notice, but it might just be because, amongst other things, the speaker makes a simple, sensible and sincere argument: "This is where I won't be alone, for this is where I know it's home." For most of us, it is an argument that is true, or at least that we hope to be.

Redness and Weakness

They are strong who are apathetic, who care about nothing and from whom nothing can be taken. For indeed there is nothing they have to be taken thus they cannot be hurt. In this manner, it is true joy and virtue to be weak, even (or some might contend especially) when there exist but one or two persons or possessions so exceedingly precious that if taken would beget in one an abyss, an anemia as if a rose lost her rubescence and her petals their twirl.