In life, there is continuity and regularity.
The stream and flow of daily life automatically establish certain frameworks and patterns.
Today is like yesterday, and tomorrow is nothing but the continuation (or even repetition) of the day that has passed.
Life goes by and often melts away under the force of constraints that a person assumes willingly or unwillingly.
The framework in which one lives, the things that one does, the profession in which one engages, and even the pastimes that one takes up to break the routine – all these become routine.
There is no free time in which to ask basic questions, because everyone is too busy solving secondary problems that arise.
The important questions – “for what reason?” and “for what purpose?” – are pushed aside.
Everyone runs, and the individual runs along with them.
He is pushed and shoved and competes in the race, to the point that he has no spare time in which to clarify where all this running actually leads to.
Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) expresses this as follows: “He also preoccupies them with the world, so that man fails to find out the [nature of] things… from beginning to end.”
— Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz