Sarci-Sense: In Praise of the Mundane, Before January Arrives

The year ends the way it usually does. With lists. With summaries. With promises we will forget by February. Every December, we pretend that life needs dramatic improvement, as if the problem was insufficient ambition rather than insufficient attention. But before the new year arrives with its loud intentions, it may be worth noticing something else. Most of our lives did not collapse this year. They continued. Quietly. Reliably. Held together by small, unremarkable acts we never post about.

We underestimate the mundane because it does not announce itself. No one celebrates the fact that they woke up, made tea, answered messages, paid bills, showed up for work, cooked something edible, and went to bed without dramatic incident. Yet that is how most lives survive. Not through breakthroughs, but through repetition. Not through reinvention, but through maintenance.

Middle age, especially, is sustained by habits that would bore a motivational speaker. The same morning walk. The same driver greeting you by name. The same shopkeeper who knows your preferences without asking. The same cup of tea in the same chipped mug. These things don’t feel important because they don’t feel new. But they are quietly stabilising. They are the scaffolding that keeps life upright while the mind is busy chasing improvement.

We spend too much time mocking routine. We call it stagnation. We accuse it of killing joy. But routine is also care in disguise. It is how the body knows it will be fed. How the mind knows it will not be overwhelmed. How relationships survive the long stretches when nothing interesting happens. The truth is, most love is not dramatic. It is logistical. Someone remembered to buy milk. Someone charged your phone. Someone asked if you ate.

As the year ends, many people feel disappointed because nothing extraordinary happened. But perhaps the achievement was that nothing fell apart. The car ran. The health mostly held. The family stayed functional. The friendships thinned but did not vanish. The days passed without catastrophe. We just forgot to respect it.

There is also something quietly generous about the mundane. Standing in queues. Waiting patiently. Letting someone merge into traffic. Making small talk with people who will never feature in your year-end gratitude post. These are not heroic acts. They are social glue. They keep the world from becoming unbearable. Civilisation survives not on inspiration, but on courtesy repeated daily by tired people.

The coming year will tempt us to upgrade everything. Better habits. Better bodies. Better goals. But perhaps what we need is not improvement, but gentleness. To do the same things with slightly less self-criticism. To stop treating ordinary days as placeholders for some future version of life. To recognise that the days we rush through are, inconveniently, our actual lives.

There is something quietly hopeful about ordinary plans for the new year. 

Not “I will transform,” but “I will sleep better.”
Not “I will find myself,” but “I will walk more.”
Not “I will change my life,” but “I will call one friend regularly.”

These acknowledge that life is not broken.

By the time you are in your middle-age, you have learnt. That happiness does not arrive dramatically. It accumulates slowly. From habits that don’t exhaust you. From relationships that don’t require performance. From days that are allowed to be unremarkable. We spend too much time waiting for meaning, and not enough time noticing what already works.

As the year turns, there is comfort in knowing that most of what will sustain you next year is already in place. The same routines. The same people. The same small comforts. The same flaws. You do not need a new personality. You need continuity. You need fewer expectations and more presence. You need to stop treating ordinary life as a temporary inconvenience on the way to something better.

The most radical thing you can do in the new year is to stay. To stay with your habits. To stay with your people. To stay with your life as it is, without constantly apologising for its lack of sparkle. There is dignity in consistency. There is peace in repetition. There is hope in knowing that tomorrow will look familiar.

We will still make resolutions. That is part of the ritual. But perhaps we can make quieter ones. To show up. To be decent. To do the boring things well. To respect the small systems that keep us functioning. To stop overlooking the ordinary miracles simply because they don’t come with captions.

As the calendar changes, nothing magical happens. But that is not a reason to despair. It is a reason to relax. Life will continue in its usual, imperfect way. And most days, that will be enough.

Happy New Year. May the coming one be normal in the best possible sense. To give you contentment without any newer FOMO, and happiness.