New York Times Puzzlers
My necessity to complicate even the most mundane tasks is so strong that I’m convinced I will pass the urge down to my children via DNA and DNA only. No nature or nurture argument here; the propensity is so definitive that it must simply be laced onto the tip of one of my chromosomes.
This trait manifests itself into the usual suspects that I’m sure if you are a regular reader of this newsletter you will be familiar with: heightened anxiety, circular ruminating, and surfacing and rehashing conflicts out of nowhere are some of the wonderful tendencies that friends and lovers alike have all had to quell in the form of an unpaid internship. Turning thoughts and situations over and over in your head is really fun. It’s semantic satiation’s grandfather and the closest I think I can get to the out-of-body experience that people who have had cardiac arrests often report experiencing.
Not to fret, as I’ve deployed some tactics courtesy of my fight-or-flight-riddled brain that I’m sure is now biologically wired to find a solution out of some frantic evolution-activation and a previous therapist whose co-pay was questionably cheap (seriously, he was great), to keep everything chugging along as best as possible. I’ve soon realized, however, that the inspiration for my solution was right in front of me. In fact, I live with him. The man who has never let anything insignificant personally bother him for more than a beat takes its form in my 66-year-old father. Let’s take a closer look at his lifestyle so that we too may learn to live a blissful and mildly-tempered life, two adjectives that no one has ever personally used to describe me.
My father takes great enjoyment in the routine of everything. He gets up early every morning to take our dog out on a long walk during off-leash hours in Central Park and usually returns in a slightly giddy mood, eager to tell me about all the shit our jaded and anti-social English Cocker Spaniel snatched up from the ground of our city’s man-made pride and joy. He sticks to a pretty consistent workout that, from what I’ve gleaned, occurs every other day. He does tend to switch up breakfast, but not until after a certain meal has been exhausted over the course of about a month. As of now, it appears to be a mini wheat variation with a box marketed to the cholesterol-conscious which he tops with sliced banana. Previously, it was cinnamon raisin toast with some cold butter scraped on via a knife that has been through the dishwasher so many times its grooves are completely rounded out. On the weekends, the skeleton of a routine is still there. Errands that cannot be run during normal business hours must be conducted earlier in the day. Newspaper reading continues on into the afternoon followed by some nodding off on the couch for about an hour before a groggy awakening to start the ball rolling on dinner plans.
One of the more exciting parts of my father’s routine, I think, is the solving of New York Times Magazine’s Spelling Bee, a puzzle that sits in the back of the pub that takes on the form of a honeycomb, featuring one letter in the middle and six immediately surrounding. The rules are simple. You have to come up with as many words as possible that are at least five letters long and they must include the middle letter. You receive one point for each word you create, but if you use all seven letters you are rewarded three points. You are permitted to use a letter more than once.
Every Sunday (and now sometimes weekday), my father begins the climb to solve this puzzle. He is not independently competitive, meaning, he actively employs my and my mother’s help and is genuinely excited when one of us is able to contribute. His enjoyment in working through the puzzle is palpable. He’ll stare at the letters for minutes at a time, walk away, return to it a little bit later, or take multiple days if he doesn’t have the time to give it the attention it requires. When a word comes to him he’ll let out an “Aha!” and write it down on the magazine before pointing it out to us. The pages will be smudged beyond legibility from his lackadaisical penmanship. Often times he’ll excitedly tell me what the highly coveted seven-letter word was the next day.
The potential for the enjoyment of the simplest tasks, the routine, and the consistencies went unnoticed by me for quite some time. As a young person, leading a life filled to the brim with drama, chaos, and a dash of interpersonal conflict means that you are living an exciting life, and exciting certainly implies an overall sense of enjoyment. It means you’re not “wasting a single minute of the time you have on this earth.” But there is something about the routine that is so wonderful, and I think it is the fact that despite the liberties we possess as human beings to choose to do whatever we please at any given moment, we can also return to the same actions over and over and over again if so desired. There is something so calming about knowing so concretely what things we enjoy and repetitively conducting them despite having seemingly unlimited other options to fill our time with.
The concept is simple — find the things you like, do them all the time, and you’ll probably be pretty relaxed. But there is something great, I think, in cherishing these more simple tasks. I’m not saying go off and pursue your dream of acting (although I encourage that as well), I’m saying eat the same breakfast every morning because you can. And because you like it.