The Absent Uncle: Exploring my habits

This topic occurred to me today as I was moving along in my normal day – with an exception – I did something different. I didn’t do my normal thing – my habit.

A habit is a difficult thing to define. One of the Webster’s definition is: a thing done often and hence, usually, done easily; practice, custom and is a pattern of action that is acquired and has become so automatic that it is difficult to break. 

There you are. Pretty much a description of my days and weeks. Certain things happen on certain days; certain things pretty much happen at a certain time of day. 

We all pretty much have these behavioral tendencies. We rise at a specific time to ensure a timely arrival at our jobs; our jobs have a cadence marching us to our required/expected performance, and at the end of the day, we each have our routines that bring us to the end of day and resting up for the next one. 

That is where weekends and holidays come in. All those actions and expectations go out the window. We are free to be spontaneous – to do what we want (or have to do, given the free time). Possibly just another set of habits, but not as rigid. 

A way back when – the Absent Uncle was observed by a casual friend to be “the most anal person I have ever seen”. I was dumbfounded; so, I needed to understand this new term and found it to be all about entrenching habits to the extreme. 

Maybe I should have resented being labeled in such a way, but as I looked at his evidence, the meaning of the word (in this tense), I certainly was guilty as charged. 

But that guilt does not mean habits are bad. They certainly work against spontaneity; but those habits get you through the day, the week, the year, and hopefully through your life if they are good habits. As many philosophers have said – “know thyself” – and thyself includes habits.