Reminisce and Repeat: Growing up Through Routine

Words by Felicia Evangelista (she/her)

It is human nature to mark a coming of age in one way or another.

In film and TV we can see this represented in almost any teenage monologue or montage, set to a song that is wistfully optimistic but not too upbeat (the tunnel scene in The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a personal favourite of mine). Many cultural celebrations also mark a coming of age, like quinceañeras in Latin America, debuts in the Philippines, and even rumspringa in certain Amish communities. 

Contrastingly, routines are something we usually don’t tend to mark in our lives. Doing a weekly supermarket shop or hiking up the Dixon Steps to uni for the third time of the week doesn’t seem particularly eventful. In their article “Routines and the Meaning of Life”, psychologists and professors Samantha Heintzelman and Laura King explain that while we associate routine with the mundane, routine is actually also linked to our perception of living a meaningful life. 

A couple of weeks ago I woke up earlier than I had in years, hours before my alarm was due to go off at 10 a.m. I’m not sure who or what possessed me because I am definitely not a morning person, but I decided that I wanted to go on a walk to see the sunrise. On my way home, I watched as my neighbourhood slowly started to come to life. People walking their dogs, a man getting milk from the dairy, the cafe around the corner getting their first deliveries of the day. Across the street, a dad walking with a toddler, all bundled up from the crisp air. I wondered if that kid would remember any of this when they grew up, if this was part of their everyday or just a memory left only for me to reminisce on. 

It doesn’t matter what stage of life you are in now, everyone has their own form of routine. Blink and you’ll miss it, but certain routines shape and characterise certain times in our lives.

At six years old, I remember my brother and I waking up early on the weekends to watch cartoons, sometimes even before my parents were awake. There was always Scooby Doo and there were always pancakes. Being a kid meant school on the weekdays and bike rides on the weekends, knowing that your parents would always be there to pick you up afterwards. 

I don’t think I ever waited for or expected this time in my life to be over, but as time passed, after-school pickups were swapped out with taking the bus to and from school. The spare house key and hand-me-down flip phone given in case of emergencies were the ultimate sign of maturity. It’s startling to remember that secondary school is seven years of a 8:30 a.m. to 3:10 p.m. routine, five days a week—more if you’re a sporty or performing arts kid. Seven years of back-to-back classes, working from textbooks and doing BuzzFeed quizzes while your teacher goes on about parabolas. You get comfortable, you become inspired to learn new things, and then you leave to grow up even more. 

In 2018, I finished school and moved here to Wellington. I didn’t just say goodbye to my family, but I also said goodbye to the routine I had been following for the last significant part of my life. But uni brought with it a whole lot of new routines too. Aside from lectures and tutorials, there was also student night. Going out and drinking with friends on Wednesdays and then slouching into a Thursday lecture with the determination and hangover recovery only a fresher could possess, became a routine itself. I grew out of student nights in second year, but the one routine I did keep was having dinner with the same group of girls every night, first at halls and then in our first flat the year after. 

And then came the wrecking ball that was 2020. The first lockdown feels like a lifetime and a half ago, but as “business as usual” faded into the rearview, we created and shared new routines. At 1 p.m. we watched the daily briefing with bated breath and then all went for a walk at another point in the day. It was, and still is, hard to live-love-laugh in these ‘unprecedented times’ and this sentiment was universally felt. In 2021, Adam Grant wrote New York Times’ most read article of the year, “There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing”. An organisational psychologist, Grant delves into “languishing” as “the neglected middle child of mental health” where we feel empty but not depressed, placated but not flourishing. Written after the initial shock of the Covid-19 pandemic, Grant credits routine as a way we fought against a sense of dread through reinforcing normalcy, and how we are still doing this, years later.

Even when feelings of loss have been strong, they have also been punctuated with pride and celebration. I hope we look at how far we’ve come and know that we’ve gone through things the younger versions of ourselves would never have imagined. Realising how far you've come or where you have ended up can fill you with a surge of pride and accomplishment, but it can also be inextricably sad and nostalgic. I think of coming of age in the same way. An equal dose of achievement mixed with loss to make the most sentimental head rush of all time.

For the most part, we all have new routines now. New things to be grateful for, old routines or people to mourn the loss of. I don’t know if these are all good things or bad. All I know is that I went from cartoons, family breakfasts, and morning drop offs to nowadays making coffee, chucking on some mascara, and running out the door. And if you’re the same, well, I love that for us.