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Habits We Indulge Ourselves In 1/29/2012 7:18:37 PM
I wonder how playing chess stop people from smoking; or knitting or typing, for that matter. In this bar, like in any bar throughout Oregon, smoking cigarettes is prohibited within 10 feet from any window or door of any establishment. But bars like The Greater Trumps (and there is quite a few of them), you can smoke cigars inside except for cigarettes. It is a grandfathered law that allows Greater Trumps’ guests to smoke cigars. A friend who mildly smokes tells me that because I am concentrating on the activity at hand, I will be able to stop or minimize my indulgence. It is a hand and mouth thing, she says. So when I play chess, I will be concentrating on the game and not on smoking. The same is true with knitting and typing.
Habits are the things we do without thinking about it. For example, I have the established habit of going to Starbucks, and then at about 6:00 to the gym. By the time it’s 10:00, I’ll be at Greater Trumps until it closes at 12:00 or 1:00 am. I have a bad habit of checking things twice or thrice, even four times before I head out the door. I check my stove, my coffee maker and my heater that they are not on. I wonder if this is a mental disease. I told my aunt, who is a doctor, about it and she told me that it might be. But it ain’t worse. It’s just habit, old fashioned habit. I was also told when I was a young lad that I can change a habit by repeating an activity so many times. I know that a lie repeated a thousand times becomes the truth, not because it is true but because the old lie is forgotten and the new one is incorporated as the new.
Perhaps, there are a few of you who are with a few quirks. Sometimes, it is not as grave as being at Starbucks, the gym or Greater Trumps. Venues change and this habit can change because it is driven by want, “I want to be at Starbucks. I want to be at Greater Trumps.” Once that want vanishes then the habit dies with it. But then, a few of you might want to do things, twice or thrice in a row like what I do: Checking the stove and toaster that it is not switched on and that the heater is switched off. We do these because of need. We need to check the stove and toaster to avoid fire. We need to check on the heater to save money. It is a drive we have because we need to or need it. Definitely, there are some of you who do things without thinking about it; that there is no compelling reason why we do it. There is no want or need but we do it anyway.
Habit is some of our idiosyncratic human activity we don’t give much attention to, although it runs our lives. It is as important as thinking, dreaming or listening. It runs our conscious and subconscious. Once a habit is ingrained we leave it to its own devices.
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