Exploring the significance of daily routines in a culture that demands perfection and happiness with imperfections.
We’ve seen the TikTok trend – so we’re going to try it… for January… at least… Today, just like every weekday at THE GLOSS, we performed the same routine: we got to The Courtyard, unlocked our offices, switched on the lights, cranked up our computers.
The last person to have their coat on walked down the Main Street to the coffee shop to pick up the team’s flat whites, skinny cappuccinos and americanos – all extra-hot, hoping Dawid, our proudly newly naturalised Irish citizen barista, was on duty. (He makes the best coffee.) We cherish our daily routines dearly – they are acts of privacy in a world accustomed to playing out the banal-made-perfect day-to-day online. As author Eliane Glaser says: “Living in a culture that simultaneously demands perfection and orders us to be happy with our imperfections, produces a paralysing dilemma.” In a culture torn between the security and pleasure of the routine and the need to be extraordinary, the middle ground, or average, may actually be “our best life”. But we need to be careful about what average means no
Daily Routines Culture Perfection Happiness Average Life