A good human life requires variety. By means of exercising properly a variety of modes of becoming (eating well, resting well, moving one’s body well, thinking clearly, etc.), a human being comes to greater vitality, becoming more alive to living, more in touch with what is beautiful, more beautiful himself.
Variety invites transitions as well as counterposes whereas repetition can only degrade. Repetition is not learning. One mode of becoming (e.g., working) cannot be performed excellently for 8-12 hours straight, only for a short while, a short energetic burst in which one wholeheartedly creates. For as long as one repeats, one’s powers of concentration are coarsened. One’s mind becomes wayward. One’s behaviors are patterned, one’s aesthetic sense dulled. One becomes, over time, a less vital human being.
Places of repetition: the office, the bar, the factory, the shopping mall.
Examples of degradation: fatigue, sickness, lethargy, mindlessness, skimming, glossing, hurrying, busying, confirming, apologizing, verbosity, overplanning.
Styles of ‘recoil’: fantasizing, daydreaming, wondering, wishing, imagining all manner of ecstasy, vacationing, going on retreats.
One cannot get out of repetition unless one ‘ruptures’ repetition. But the rupturing of repetition is a return to variety. To welcome variety would mean living very differently.
Andrew James Taggart, Practical Philosopher, Ph.D. 