Tales of the unexpected

lsproule@thereview.ca
I refuse to eat the same thing for breakfast every day and have to confess: I inwardly sigh with a resigned kind of boredom when I hear people talk about that vitamin pill they take every day at 7:46 a.m. or that they never start watching a movie after 9 p.m. 
While I do like routine to a point, why do the same thing in the same way day-in and day-out? You might automate your life so much that you could sleep right through it and not be missed. The horror of it all is something I don’t even want to think about.
Luckily for me, my first jobs contained enough of the unexpected to keep my interest. But the part-time job as a high school student at this newspaper won my heart and my full attention. Something new every day? Try something new every 10 minutes. I had found my calling.
Decades later, something new is still the name of the game. In addition to community news, there is new technology, new ways of collecting the news and new computer skills to learn every day.
This past year, I have tried some good new things: I joined aerobics last winter and jump-started myself away from the sluggishness acquired from a downward spiral of sedentary non-activity. I tried yoga, too and rediscovered that if life and people seem inflexible at times, my body still has some of its flexibility.
I have been walking on the recreational trail and have taken time (literally) to smell the roses and pick some elderberries, too. I bring music and my ipod and love this new, nearby getaway.
A few weeks ago, I tried a zumba class and was surprised to discover about 100 women who were, like me,  ready for fun when we could turn the world off for a few minutes. Listening to loud music and learning new dance moves felt like a breath of fresh air blowing through my body. There’s a new set of dance moves every five minutes or so.  I had to pay attention and there was no space left for worry.
The unexpected advent of a wheat-free diet in the household has also given rise to new food thoughts in the past few weeks. No bread? What else is there? As it turns out, there is quite a lot. Still, as we cast about for alternatives to wheat, it makes me wonder why we have made changes to the gene which, after all, was the staff of life for many centuries. This seems one case where something new was actually something destructive.
Moving to new or alternate foods has reminded me that while I do like new things, I have never been a brave one when it comes to trying new foods. It seems I could use a new way of thinking when it comes to new tastes.
But when it comes to new music, bring it on. We live in a golden time when music from all ethnicities is just a click away. What can match hearing a beautiful or exotic piece of music for the first time? I hate those contests where one has to come up with the 10 pieces of music or 10 movies one would take to a desert island. Stuck with the same 10 pieces of music? Not something I want to think about.
While a lot of new things just seem to happen, we can look within when we want new ways of thinking about things.
Thinking about ourselves in new ways and re-thinking what is in the world around us is perhaps the most challenging yet most effective exercise to injecting some excitement and growth into life.
For instance, I have never liked to exercise just for the sake of exercising. I am not the kind of person who likes running in place to get nowhere. But I have made an effort this past year to think of myself as someone who likes to -- dare I say it -- be physically active. And so, I become that person with a sort of new outlook on who I am.
And so, the something new that I come to at this stage of life: the quest for discovery replaces the youthful notion of understanding and settling upon things once and for all.
Things change. We change.
What else is new?