Monotony

I am very drawn to the humor of Jerry Seinfeld. There’s just something about those universal minutiae that we all experience. We all lead vastly different lives with vastly different personalities, yet we all experience the same seemingly insignificant and sometimes ironic little events. Today, I want to talk about one of those things: the grocery store.

The grocery store often represents the epitome of mindless minutiae and existential angst. There’s a reason David Foster Wallace uses a trip to the grocery store when discussing the monotony of life in his Commencement Speech to Kenyon College. Often, we feel like pigs feeding from a trough. There’s a certain powerlessness inherent in such an outing. We all have to venture out to the store, and we almost never gain any enjoyment from it. There’s something soul-sucking about the awkward aisles, the long lines, the eerie lighting and trite music. Like Sisyphus pushing up his rock only for it to fall again, we must return to the grocery store time after time.

But this time, on this trip, something was different. I got in line, I put my items on the conveyor belt, and anticipated yet another surly cashier. Instead, my cashier’s cheerfulness cut through the monotony, diffusing it completely. We didn’t talk about anything meaningful, but we shared that moment. We most likely came from different backgrounds, but we shared that moment.

The typical existentialist response to monotony and purposelessness is a profound and extravagant explication of suffering and absurdity. And certainly, these philosophers are onto something.  But it doesn’t take a lot to diffuse the monotony. Sometimes it only takes a cheerful hello.