Hung out with an uncle (mamoon) yesterday who tends to be very real about life. He does not hesitate to talk about real, hard facts of life, career and relationships. I appreciate those conversations. It really helps that he is also quite funny.

There have been a few things he has said in passing that have lead me on my own search for information and meaning without ever uttering a word to him. One of the things he said a long time ago, and then again yesterday was that no matter what you do with your life, no matter how ambitious that goal appears to be, you reach a day when it stops requiring as much from you. You get what you do down to a science. As a doctor, he said, he knows exactly what to prescribe when. It happens rather rarely that you have something novel thrown your way which actually requires you to think. I can most definitely see what even the best of routines can do to you.

Yesterday, he also added, if you look back to the last 4 (or so) years of your life and you don't have a good amount of memories, you haven't done much. Your life has become routine and you haven't been living; it's time to make a change. 

It's important to be reminded of that. Repeating routines is not really living. You have to infuse life in your everyday, be it in attempts to move forward or see all situations as anew everyday. Life would be way too dull without that.