【轻阅读，看世界】What is the biggest lesson that life has taught you?

铅笔英语，每晚睡前故事。

看世界人生百态，品人间真情冷暖。

多一种语言，多一个纬度，多一段故事。

Boring is a blessing.

I live a very boring life, and, I believe as a direct result of that, I’m much happier than a lot of other people my age.

Every work day I go to work, come home, help the kids with their homework, walk the dog, make dinner, workout, walk the dog again, clean the house, spend some time with my wife, and then go to sleep. Non-work days are for grocery shopping, yard work, and hanging out with my family.

This has been my life for the last four years… since we got our dog. Before that, everything was the same except for the dog-walking part.

I’ve shopped at the same handful of places for the last decade. We rarely go to dine-in restaurants, but when we do, they’re the same handful of places we always go. I live in one of the biggest, most cosmopolitan cities in the world, with plenty to offer, and I can afford most of its offerings. Yet I don’t. Well, we rarely do anything exciting that Chicago has to offer. We did go see Hamilton three years ago. And Monster Jam two years ago. So there’s that.

The only reason I’ve stayed up past midnight in the last 15 years is because one of my children was being born, or they were awake and needed me… not for anything fun that I was doing by choice. If I’m out of my house after 10pm, it’s because I needed some medicine for a sick child and I had to go to the 24-hour pharmacy nearby.

We vacation in the same place every year: a beach near where I grew up. I have absolutely zero desire or plans to travel to another country in my lifetime. I would like to see other parts of this country, though. Maybe one day.

The single most exciting thing that has happened to me so far in 2020 is that I found a new chili verde recipe that everyone in the family enjoys. It’s rare to find something that we all enjoy. My six-year-old daughter is usually the outlier.

When I was younger, I used to worry about how boring my life was. I used to fret over the fact that I spent most weekends in my early 20s just chilling in my apartment by myself. I never went to bars, never went to clubs, never did much of anything. My idea of a good time was playing Civilization for hours on end, or taking a walk around downtown and just people-watching.

But now that I’m almost 40, I can see the different paths that all of my high school and college friends took in life. With a few exceptions, almost everyone whom I thought had a more exciting life than I had in the past is now in a position where “boring” isn’t even an option for them. They’re eager to find the same boring rut in their lives that I’ve had in mine for a long time now. Theirs are stories of struggling to find a life partner, failed marriages, failed careers, annual moves to new apartments, multiple children from multiple partners, run-ins with the law, still living paycheck-to-paycheck, lifestyle-induced health problems, etc…

And, of course, some of those with really exciting lives (read: drugs) in high school are now dead.

Being boring requires a lot of stability: mental stability, relationship stability, financial stability, career stability, etc… I am blessed to have so much stability in my life that being boring is so easy for me.

Have you ever heard the phrase, “no news is good news?” That’s how I live my life, and it’s working out very well for me.

Person I haven’t seen in a while: “What’s new, Matthew?”

Me: “Absolutely nothing, just the way I like it.”