If you look up the etymology of the word ‘habit’, it means to hold, consider or have in mind.
That’s right: Habits are thought!
No surprises there, eh? 😆
Given the capricious, ever-evolving nature of thought, it also explains why habits—these behaviours we see, that lie downstream of the beliefs holding them in place—tend to come and go.
They’re held in mind. And then they’re not.
An example of one that’s most immediately in my face at the moment: a period of lying fallow, when it comes to cycling. One minute I was doing it daily. The next, three weeks had passed, with no riding.
🤷🏻♂️
I am back to being de-conditioned and relatively unfit.
Sure, there was a catalyst – the time off was sparked by a cold. And now I’m super-busy all day every day, setting up a new website.
But essentially I’ve ‘got out of the habit’, by which I mean to say, it’s not being ‘held in mind’.
Habits seen from this perspective make a lot more sense.
My daughter surprised me this morning, by running back into the house from the front gate, proclaiming,
“I forgot to brush my hair! I really like to brush my hair every day before school.”
😳
I say surprised, because it wasn’t all that long ago that my wife and I, in spite of considerable efforts (even going so far as roping in relatives to give non-boring old parents encouragement) could not get that girl to brush her hair. Ever!!
It wasn’t being held in mind. And then it was.
Just like the time when the opposite was happening, and we went through a 6 month period of the lounge being in total darkness whenever she was watching TV, because of a non-negotiable curtain-closing habit.
It passed, of course.
It was being held in mind. And then it wasn’t.
As parents, with minds that behave just like everybody else’s—i.e. dealing largely in black and white—when you’re going through these phases, they really look like that’s it. They look like they won’t change.
The mind takes what it knows of Now (the situation right in front of us), mixes it in with the past (although it forgets how change works, and that we’ve seen a dozen of these phases come and go already!!) and it projects in to the future.
📦🗣️: “Yup. This is it now, you know? They’ll be [insert weird kid-habit du jour] when they’re 25 and their life will be ruined.”
😂
When I look back on the amount of parental hand-wringing, and trying, and despairing that we did for both of those scenarios above… well, blimey.
One has to wonder.
Was all the angst really necessary?
😬
Giles
p.s. you know this isn’t just about weird kid-habits, don’t you?
Thought so 😉
Related:
Giles P Croft
You can read all about the curtain-closing débâcle here 💌