question of the day #6 - 04-04-02

...what i am wondering, really, is this: if our habits are literally who we are, and i suppose the reason we pick up some and not others is determined by the habits we already cling to (is this what you think?), then is the changing of one's lifestyle the same thing as a personality/self suicide-and-reincarnation?

no, because the system allows for variation. even though we are composed of habits generally, this does not mean we are determined by our particular habits.

also, a habit doesn't start out as such, it starts at a single action. the fact that i have gotten "in the habit" of getting a certain soup for lunch when i am working started out with me getting it just once. at what point does an act become a habit?

when that act is repeated without conscious decision more frequently than mere chance would allow. to the extent that you are not actively choosing that particular soup, against all other soups and against not getting soup at all, to the extent that it is simply easier for you to get that soup than to make a conscious decision about your lunch, you have become a creature of habit. note that this is adaptive - because we could not bear to decide all the things we could possibly decide in a day, or even an hour. why raise your left hand instead of your right? why pass that hand over your eyes? does one say "hello" or "good morning"? blue socks or brown? vinaigrette or creamy italian? camels or winstons? we simplify, to make life manageable.

anything that is not random, and is not conscious, is habit.

a friend of mine and i were talking (in horror) the other day about "the grooves we wear into our lives", to use his phrase. and think about it - your toothbrush, the treads of your shoes, the way anything you've worn for more than a few hours smells, your moles, how your lips are always chapped or your nose always shiny, the way you answer the phone, your coughs and sniffles - it's the accretion (to use an unbecoming word) of all these things that constitutes a life. we are composed primarily of residue.

to get back to the earlier issue of how particular habits cohere to form a "personality", once an act is repeated "for its own sake" it is no longer merely habit, but habit that is now actively employed in personality formation. through what may have begun as a conscious choice (if there is such a thing) and then became an unconscious tendency, you evolved into "a person who gets that particular soup". but again, the system admits variation. by choosing another soup one day you can be "the person who usually gets that particular soup", your very minor rebellion merely serving to add a little spice to your image of yourself. or at least allowing you the comforting thought that you might not consist wholly of habit. but even if you were to change soups entirely, you would soon again become habituated. as soon as you once again "chose" that soup without making an active decision. or, to remain technically accurate, once the number of times you ordered that soup exceeded the number of times you would be expected to order it based on chance alone, without active decision-making.

but we've wandered far from the initial topic. the original question was "why are habits hard to break?" this refers specifically to habits of a compulsive nature. in other words, habits with particular value as habits. these are the habits that make us who we are on a more than merely structural level. we move from random or conscious acts to habituated acts to acts "for their own sake" to acts that "must" be carried out. note that this is not necessarily a contradiction of what i said at the very beginning, but please also note that i'm too tired to try explaining why and am going to bed.

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