As we glide through a life directed by circumstance, we can boil down our trajectory to two composites; our preferences and our choices. Lacking the ability to be everywhere at once with all desired resources at our command, we are tethered to our immediate future by the environment we reside in. As reliable as the sun’s rise, one’s morning commute repeats and repeats at fatalism’s command. There are indeed slight nuances in the journey’s fabric differing day-by-day. You catch the bus at a different time, brush past new people, take a step or two out of line, but the destination is always the same. The desire to do most anything else courses through your mind but never undoes the repetition ingrained in your lifestyle.
For the past year-and-a-half, my lunchtimes have not only been characterized by specific locations and meals, but by a lingering music cue that is presently inescapable. Given my inclination towards prepared salsas and a cursory intolerance to gluten, my reliance on Livingston’s own Qdoba is persistent. The time spent meandering between Business School classes is best served by an interim meal, yet the options presented by Livingston campus are inherently limited. If one is fated to think rationally (and is doomed to have parking on just one campus), they will often find their dining options confined to one location, lacking much margin for travel.
So low and behold, Monday at noon I happily clock into the Qdoba up the street for some post-morning-class dining. It is mostly a cause for celebration. A fully customizable (to a point) burrito bowl provides the illusion of choice and not a moment of time wasted. But something much more sinister lurks in the background of my trusted destination. Inseparable from my trips to Qdoba is a common playlist timed perfectly to my arrival. Try as I might, a bossa-nova rendition of Coldplay’s “Clocks” accompanies my lunch meal every single time, imprinted upon my brain permanently. And what began as a likable novelty has now become a fixture of my school week.
In advance of every lunch trip, I know it is coming. I even know that it’ll appear a bit before 12:30 PM, but no amount of preparation, besides an entire uprooting of my culinary tastes, can prevent me from encountering the song squarely in the midst of my meal. Some invisible force prevents me from pulling out my own headphones to ward the music off. There’s a substantial chance that my meal is too messy for wired headphones to get involved, and within me I have no compulsion to get my order to go even as the same playlist bombards me for months on end. I am the victim of my own choices amidst inescapable circumstance. One’s taste is the most fatalistic force of them all. You can try to conduct but the music is in someone else’s control.
This article was written in the comparatively naive times of January 2020, as of its publication, Zachary Kauz can say he misses the Livingston Qdoba and even its one lingering in-store playlist that barraged him weekly. He is taking the time spent remotely to learn to be more appreciative of past routines, and encourages others to do the same.