I've been thinking about habits lately, and I've decided that there's no such thing as a good habit. I can't think of one, at least. It seems like, once something becomes a habit, it can't be really good any more. I mean, I see it all the time in Mormon culture--even in my own life--that when, say, praying becomes a habit, you find yourself blessing the food when you're going to bed and praying by name for a prophet who died more than a year ago. When scripture study becomes a habit, it ceases to be study and is reduced to staring unseeingly at a word-covered page.
I suppose one might argue that something like exercise doesn't depend on ardent attention: if you get up every morning and go for a run, it'll do your heart some good regardless of how much you put your heart into it. [I intended that to be clever, but I think I missed my mark. Any suggestions on that?] But I disagree. If I set a goal to be able to do 100 push-ups in a go (ha! that'll be the day...), and I hop out of bed every morning and crank out some push-ups, I may very well see the day when I can do 100, but if, once I have achieved that goal, it becomes a habit for me to hop out of bed every morning and do 100 push-ups, then I cease to progress and merely maintain a new status quo. If I go out and habitually run every morning, my running will probably decrease in zeal over time until it is no sort of exercise at all.
I guess my biggest beef is with that motivational poster I see from time to time--something about thoughts becoming words becoming deeds becoming habits becoming destiny-defining character--because it's naught to me but a pretty little platitude, an emerald slippery-slide argument, charming fatalism. Furthermore, I've had a lot of thoughts that sublimated directly into actions without bothering to become words, and actions can similarly impact destiny without bothering to become habits or characteristics: just drive drousily one time and run over a young mother--you don't have to make a habit of it, you'll still go to jail.
And those are my thoughts for the day.
Hey, whoa! That's way deep. I think I... probably agree. I need to ponder it more.
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ReplyDeleteI mostly agree with you, but I don't think your 100-pushups analagy makes any sense. You think one shouldn't do pushups unless they continue to do more each day? You would rather I do 100 this week and 1000 next year and 20000 the year after that? How is that better?
I agree that habits may limit progression but they can also limit digression. It's nice to think that daily originality and spontaneity will thrust us towards godhood, but I think it's less about doing something different than being a bit more zen --- actually be where you are and do what you are doing.
Allie--ponder away: I'd like to hear your thoughts.
ReplyDeleteTheric--your "daily originality and spontaneity" is merely the other extreme, which might be just as bad. I agree with you that we need to be where we are, doing what we're doing--and I think that once something is relegated to habit, chances that we will be there doing it are greatly diminished.
So do you have a word, then, for actions we repeat on a daily basis that don't become habitual?
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Alas, of all enemies, habit is perhaps the most cunning, and above all it is cunning enough never to let itself be seen, because the person who sees the habit is saved from the habit. Habit is not like other enemies that one sees and against which one aggressively defends oneself; the struggle is actually with oneself in getting to see it. There is a predatory creature, known for its cunning, that slyly attacks the sleeping; while it is sucking blood from the sleeper, it fans and cools him and makes his sleep even more pleasant. Such is habit—or it is even worse; that creature seeks its prey among the sleeping, but it has not means to lull to sleep those who are awake. Habit, however, has this; it sneaks, sleep-lulling, upon a person, and when this has happened it sucks the blood of the sleeper while it fans and cools him and makes his sleep even more pleasant.
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Let the thunder of a hundred cannons remind you three times a day to resist the force of habit. Like that mighty Eastern emperor, keep a slave who reminds you daily, keep hundreds. Have a friend who reminds you every time he sees you. Have a wife who, in love, reminds you early and late--but take care that this does not also become a habit! You can become so habituated to hearing the thunder of a hundred cannons that you can sit at the table and hear the slightest triviality much more clearly than the thunder of the hundred cannons--which you have become habituated to hearing. You can become so habituated to having hundreds of slaves remind you every day that you no longer hear them, because through habit you have acquired ears that hear and yet do not hear.
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Habit is the most lamentable change, but on the other hand one can become habituated to any change. Only the eternal, and therefore that which has undergone the change of eternity by becoming duty, is the unchanging--but the unchanging that specifically cannot become habit. However firmly a habit fixes itself, it never becomes the unchanging, even if a person becomes incorrigible, since habit is continually something that ought to be changed; the unchanging, however, is something that neither can nor ought to be changed. But the eternal never becomes old and never a habit.
So, I guess duty is the word.
ReplyDeletePresident Monson would agree. And I think I do too except that duty seems to carry a somewhat negative connotation--like, if you do something out of duty, you don't want to do it--but I don't think it ought to carry that connotation.
(FYI that Kierkegaard quote came from Hong's translation of Works of Love, page 36-37)
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ReplyDeleteK would seem to argue eternal.