BitterSweetLife

Monotony.

It’s a commodity that exists in such large quantities that the demand will never catch up. People have the impression that to encounter monotony is to be bored. Therefore no one wants it, and we have all these euphemisms for the same-old, same-old. Just the daily grind, you know, stuck in the waiting room, spinning your wheels. Just waiting for life to start.

Monotony has been the subject of many depressing songs. But it has its uses.

If nothing else, dull uniformity gives us a chance to work out the reality of our lives—our character, our faith—in the squeaky vacuum of unwinding time.

Like a symbols on a chalkboard, the “tedious life” as it appears is seldom overwhelming in its grandeur. It’s mere life-continuation. Squiggly white lines manage to break up the grey-green field, communicate a sketchy message, and not much more. Chalkboards have never been the preferred backdrop for astonishing revelations. However, they’ve often been the medium for rock-hard truths, unglamorous at the time, but irrefutably real.

As Socrates or someone once said, “The un-bromidic* life is not worth living.” Lackluster periods have a desired outcome, and Surprise!— that outcome is not disgruntled boredom. Rather, character is actuated, tested and proven in these down times. For those who know Christ, or claim to, the ante is upped: How real is your faith? How sincere is your pursuit of God? You won’t know till you collide with the massive inertia of sameness.

To utilize it—exploit it by continuing to be who you are—that’s the essential thing. You can’t afford to stand still and wait it out. No one has ever succeeded in “waiting out” monotony and remaining themselves. Strangely enough, continuing to be "who you are" in such a time is to actually become that person.

As Robert Browning wrote,
“I count life just a stuff
To try the soul’s strength on.”

Sameness is meant to sharpen inspiration, prove its reality in a kind of prolonged "clutch-time." Unfortunately, most people don’t make the proper use of their allotted dullness. Each of us is only given so much, and to waste it can be a costly mistake. We’re all destined for some dust. Whether we emerge reduced or deepened depends on one thing…

What kind of a person are you? To the (bored) horror of many, life-formation is the purpose of tedium.


This word appears in association with the Vocabulary Reclamation Project.
* Bromidic (“bro-mid-ick”). For some reason this word reminds me of that ominous phrase from Julius Caesar, “Beware the ides of March!” (Maybe it’s the consonance: that “B” in common—“Beware”/“Bromidic”—combined with the shared “id” syllable…) From this you might conclude, if you were paying attention earlier, that those Ides must have been a very tedious, wearisome, lackluster time. Which no doubt they were, until the moment of the assassination attempt. And there you have it. Not only have you just learned a new word, but you’ve acquired a little Shakespeare knowledge as well.