"The more predictable your days become, the faster your neurons quiet down."*
True, but only up to a point. Complete unpredictability is chaos. What the brain needs most is novelty of thought, perspective, insight… not an absence of stable habits. Our days are inevitably predictable, mostly, in outer form. But they can be constantly improvised and experienced anew from the inside.
Take my dogwalks, for instance. The pooches and I vary our routes daily, but inevitably traverse familiar ground. Yet no two dogwalks feel exactly the same. It's the old Heraclitus observation: you can't step into the same river twice. Time marches on, as do we. Subjectivity makes the difference. Our repetitive circles can expand their orbits, as inner experience expands and grows. That's how you "break the loop." (See Emerson's essay Circles.)
That's how I do, anyway. As for the dogs? They never seen bored. They never meet a squirrel, for instance, or another dog's backside, that doesn't fascinate them. They never seem old in spirit. (See Mark Rowland's The Word of Dog: What Our Canine Companions Can Teach Us About Living A Good Life.)
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