A couple of days ago I was on a familiar running route that I’ve done dozens of times over the past year… through a park, down a dirt road, across a river, up some switchbacks, down another dirt road… it’s like my gym routine. Get in, do the routine, get out. Rinse and repeat.
I like routines, and they’re very important for creating stability and consistent growth. But sometimes they get stale. A personal trainer is probably going to keep switching up workouts for their clients, not only to keep the client’s body from becoming too adapted to the workout, but also to keep the workout fun and interesting, which might be even more important. I have found that it’s not all that helpful to exercise my body when I’m bored out of my mind and my heart is offline. A really good workout often entails some mental stimulation and emotional engagement and inspiration.
A couple of days ago, at the top of the switchbacks, I just felt like going “off trail” farther up the hill, perhaps to find a quiet shady place to meditate for 20 or 30 minutes. But about 50 feet “off trail” I found another actual trail. More switchbacks! Well now, I’m not the type of person to not run up new switchbacks I’ve never switched back on before. Up I went, experiencing new curves and plant configurations that somehow my brain is able to distinguish from the other trails I’ve run many times. Some unconscious memory process “knows” that this is a new trail, and it loves that fact. I look behind me occasionally and I see new views between the pine trunks. What’s this? I can now see those old trails I run but from the vantage point of this trail. I’ve never seen this side of that mountain before! And so on…
I got to the top and found a flat area amenable to a 25 minute sitting meditation. Only a couple of mosquitos visited me. Several small ants crawled on my feet and legs, but they were clearly not interested in biting. They were tickling my leg hairs, and I spent a few minutes watching one, seemingly searching for something microscopic, perhaps to eat? I can only guess, but it seemed clear that something on my body was worth their labor of postponing their other ant business and scavenging around. Or perhaps they were also just exploring new trails? Do ants get bored and under-stimulated, day-in and day-out on high alpine mountain tops that freeze over in deep snow every winter, permitting relatively few species to grow there in the summer?
Normally, I’m afraid that I callously flick ants off of me with what is probably not a healthy amount of force for them. But after watching these few particular ants for a while, I felt an affinity for them, a connection. I was reminded of the connection between attention and love. Just several minutes of putting my attention on these ants made their ant experience “real” and important enough to me to make me feel a little more “love” toward them, and gently brush them off my legs when I stood up after my meditation was over.
And that reminds me of how we can love ourselves by paying close attention to our own experience, needs, desires, and feelings. It’s less intuitive, and perhaps more challenging, since we are not looking at our own bodies from the outside. We look outward from our own eyes and heads. But I do believe that it’s a way to cultivate caring and self-love. I imagined myself like the ant. I am orders of magnitude bigger, but from the vantage point of a low-flying airplane, I am as small or smaller, just crawling up a steep hill in between some pine trees, which from high up appear as small as leg hairs. I wasn’t looking for food for my body, but I was looking for food for my spirit: novelty, variety, solitude, communion with nature, adventure, inspiration, and newfound strength — all of which I found, to some degree, by exploring a new trail.
I found myself thinking that I had done enough after about 10 km from home. But the new trails lead uphill, and called to me. A “time-to-explore” button had been pressed in my psyche. I also noticed a primal anxiety that accompanies 1) exploring unfamiliar territory and 2) venturing a bit farther from home under the power of my own human and fallible legs. All of these forces combined to formulate the repeated decision to “just go a little bit farther, just a little bit higher.” The subtle fears were out-voted by the less subtle curiosities about what scenic view reward might be just around the next bend or beyond the next hill. My other plans for the day could wait for this opportunity. There was the risk, of course, that there would be no such vista reward, that I’d find myself in an anticlimactic dead end and characterless drove of trees, perhaps arriving at some ugly man-made industrial structure in the forest at the end of the dirt road. Such is the gamble with any new pursuit in life, which is why we so often stick to the familiar routine, which offers known risks and predictable rewards, albeit with diminishing returns.
To my delight, the road became a single track again and became more beautiful and I found myself overlooking a stunning view and enjoying a symphonic bird chorus at around 8000 feet. I made a mental note of some magical and secluded camping spots.
I also found that the track connected to another trail that I have run many times, illuminating the territory map in my head, closing the now-expanded circuit and repertoire of future options for routines. The exploratory gamble paid off.
The decision to explore
The decision to try something new vs stick to routine is not a moral one and depends on our needs. Routines are low-risk and great for healing and creating stability. They are necessary. Explorations are higher-risk and are great for introducing new stimulation and growth-inducing challenge. We need a balance of both.
It seems likely to me that some people naturally lean towards routine and could benefit from challenging themselves to take on more explorations, finding more new trails. Others lean toward novelty and could benefit to incorporate more routine in their lives. I’ve experience both of these tendencies at different points in my life. These days I am trying to be mindful of challenging myself to more novelty.
An imbalance in either direction is probably, at the root, induced by anxiety. Creatures of habit are anxious about the discomfort and risk that is always entailed in trying something new. Restless nomads are anxious about the risk involved in sitting with their own minds and hearts when the distraction of novelty and change isn’t available. It is important in life to learn to explore the inner landscapes as well as the outer ones. And, inner landscapes (mental dialogs, emotional patterns) can become stale as well, if we continuously explore the same ones.
I know that for me, when I explore more in the physical world, it tends to help me explore more in my inner world. It’s as if there are explore circuits, “muscles”, instincts, that atrophy if I don’t work them out. Explore workouts can look like running a new trail, or simply closing my eyes and opening myself to whatever new feelings and thoughts “want” to arise. Novelty doesn’t always look like stereotypical exploration, trailblazing in the woods, although it is often that. Sometimes, trailblazing of the inner heart, mind, and spirit is needed, when we haven’t done that kind of exploring for a while. And sometimes, when I jog in the woods for hours, I can do both types of exploration at the same time, and that feels like big growth happening.
