Why I am Fed Up of Living Like a Zombie

Some people are more susceptible to ingrained habits than others. Now, I’m not an expert on zombies, but it seems to me that there is not a lot of free will hiding behind those lifeless eyes. If some warm flesh comes onto their radar, they might stumble after it, but that is pretty much the extent of living like a zombie. They are called the undead, but they might as well be.

A zombie’s life is not worth living.

I don’t know about you, but I have definitely fallen into a zombified groove a few times – to varying degrees of self-detriment. You get comfortable with relationships, and you start to neglect them. Maybe you talk to the same people, read the same websites and do the same things – allowing your brain to slip into a coma of familiarity. You let your circumstances and environment define you – why should you change when nothing around you demands that change?

It’s just easier living like a zombie. You get by. You don’t know any different.

But imagine that your neighbour is living in the same way. The parents at your child’s school and the supporters next to the netball court. Even your dearest friends and family are stuck in their own parallel grooves – they intersect with your groove, but they rarely seek to knock you out of it. Why would they? They might endanger their sense of balance.

Maybe this feeling of consistency is what people might call sanity.

I am not so sure.

Living like a zombie can only lead to one place. There is sadly little sanity to be found there.

We read stories about 9-year-olds being weaned off online games by their despairing parents. There is no better illustration of zombification than that, and we are so naturally disposed to it that even little kids (who should be outside playing with their mates) become hooked all too easily. Mental ill-health is a dark and dangerous place.

Zombie living

I bet that if you are honest, you can see that zombie within yourself, just below the surface. You want to find balance and float along the river of life, but in choosing not to swim against the current now and again, you also reduce your ability to change when needed.

With all the shit going on in the world at the moment, who would blame you?

I’m not sure that I have any answers because I am definitely guilty of living like this myself. At times I am a zombie writer – I feel like I have a very fixed style and voice. And sadly, I am possibly even a zombie parent – I don’t do enough different activities with the kids. And as I slump in front of the latest box set, I know that I could be reading a book, but I tell myself that it won’t make a difference.

I don’t question myself enough. That is the hallmark of a zombie.

So, I am writing this to try to convince myself to shake myself out of those grooves that aren’t so good for me (and even those grooves that are). Spending long enough time in any groove will become harder and harder to escape. It might not be possible when you need to change.

Life is going to throw a lot of challenges our way over the next couple of decades.

If you live like a zombie, will you have the capacity to cope?

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This blog is shared with Job Seeker Duetists. 

Written by former recruitment ghostwriter Paul Drury (not AI).