The problem is not routine. The problem is unconsciousness.
For a long time, I was drawn towards variety.
New places. New countries. New projects. New conversations.
From 2008 to 2018, life felt like an exploration. Ever since graduating from IIM Bangalore, I found myself constantly moving. Travel became a way of life. Different cultures, different people, different business challenges. Every year seemed to bring another chapter.
Variety felt alive.
Routine, on the other hand, seemed dangerous. It looked predictable. Repetitive. Almost like a slow surrender to habit.
But over time, my relationship with repetition began to change.
Not because life became less varied.
Because I began to see more carefully.
The first real pause came through my Everest incident in 2017.
I collapsed due to high-altitude cerebral oedema and spent 33 days unconscious in a critical care unit in Nepal.
Experiences like this change your relationship with life.
When you wake up after being completely absent from the world for more than a month, many things that once felt urgent lose their importance. The constant desire to keep moving, to keep accumulating experiences, begins to soften.
Life slows you down.
Not necessarily on the outside, but certainly on the inside.
A little later, my father’s passing brought another layer of grounding.
Loss has its own way of changing perspective.
It reminds us of what is permanent and what is passing.
The world may continue moving at the same speed, but something inside becomes quieter.
And from that quieter place, I began to understand something strange.
There is no such thing as repetition.
At least not in the way I once imagined.
A walk is never the same walk.
A conversation is never the same conversation.
A morning is never the same morning.
The person experiencing it has already changed.
The situation has already changed.
The world around them has already changed.
It may look repetitive from a distance.
But when attention is present, every moment reveals itself as new.
The problem is not routine.
The problem is unconsciousness.
When awareness is absent, even variety becomes repetitive.
When awareness is present, even repetition becomes endlessly fresh.
I began to appreciate routine for a reason I had not understood before.
Routine builds something.
It builds the quiet strength to return.
To practise.
To remain committed.
To continue showing up long after the excitement has disappeared.
Discipline is not the enemy of freedom.
It is often the path to it.
The ability to repeat something consciously develops resilience.
It develops steadiness.
It develops trust in oneself.
And yet, variety has its place too.
Variety expands.
Routine deepens.
One stretches us outward.
The other takes us inward.
Life does not ask us to choose between them.
Life seems to invite both.
Looking back, the first ten years after graduation were years of expansion.
The years that followed became years of integration.
Travel remained.
Work remained.
People remained.
But my relationship with all of them changed.
The outer movement continued.
The inner movement slowed.
And gradually, another insight emerged.
What if stability and agility are not opposites?
What if variety and routine are not opposites?
What if they are simply different appearances of the same reality?
A tree is stable.
Its leaves dance in the wind.
The ocean stays where it is.
Its waves never stop moving.
Stillness and movement coexist.
Perhaps life is like that too.
Today, I find myself less interested in categorising experiences.
Less interested in deciding whether a day was exciting or ordinary.
Less interested in measuring progress through movement alone.
What matters more is presence.
To be fully available to this moment.
To see every situation as an opportunity to remember.
An opportunity not to forget the deeper reality that runs through all experiences.
Many spiritual traditions point towards this.
The mind creates divisions.
Yesterday.
Today.
Tomorrow.
Here.
There.
Me.
You.
Routine.
Variety.
But beneath these divisions lies something that is always present.
The now.
Not as an idea.
As a living reality.
When attention settles there, life becomes surprisingly simple.
The ordinary reveals itself as extraordinary.
The repetitive reveals itself as unique.
And the search for variety loses some of its urgency.
Not because life becomes smaller.
Because life becomes deeper.
Perhaps this is why peace cannot be found through constant movement alone.
Nor through rigid stability.
Peace seems to appear when both collapse into the same moment.
This moment.
The only moment that has ever existed.
And from here, routine and variety cease to be enemies.
Both become expressions of the same unfolding life.
Both become sacred.
Both become new.
Every single time.
The more I reflect on it, the less I see life as a choice between stability and agility, routine and variety, movement and stillness.
They are not opposites.
They are different ways of describing the same reality.
A reality that is always unfolding, always changing, always new.
When lived consciously, there is no repetition.
Only deeper seeing.
And perhaps that is why the present moment remains endlessly alive.
Not because it changes.
But because we do.