Despite years and years of practicing meditation (off and on), my mind wanders incessantly to dark places in the quiet zones of life. I am not a self-talker, I tend to spend most of my life silent, so I fill up the air around me with music or, on these morning walks, podcasts.
This morning a podcast asked the rhetorical question, “You remember what family dinners were like as a child, don’t you?” It caught me off guard. I stopped and stared across Lake Ella while Keely stared at me.
No, I don’t remember. “Family dinner” was not a thing in my household, despite the years and years we all sat down to eat together.
I thought about walking Keely, then. I walk her every day. I have walked her every day, rain or shine, since she joined my household. Yet, as consistent as I’ve been with that responsibility, it’s always been — like my “family dinners” — a little bit capricious:
Never the same walk, and never at the same time.
Likewise, my alarm(s) go off at the same time every morning, even on the weekends, but I never actually get out of at the same time.
I crave structure but I demand flexibility. I suppose that’s why I enjoy letting Keely have her lead so often, because she is, like me, a capricious creature of habit. We always go the same direction around the little pond-lake, at around the same time of morning.
But.
We make choices that are never exactly the same. A cut through here, a round-about way there. Familiar yet not routine.
“A Capricious Creature of Habit” would make a good title for my autobio, I suppose.