Homing or Habits?
I was going to write a series about habits and how I rather like them...
Still do, and for me they're certainly more useful than 'strategies' (see end note). But I'm noticing that when things become habitual, acting is automatic and gathers the contempt they say arrives with familiarity.
It's worse than that - the objects involved in habits disappear!
My coffee cup disappears. Is it even a holder for coffee? The coffee no longer dances on my taste-buds but becomes a vehicle which I associate picking up a pen and journalling.
Making a ritual out of habits, making them devotions, only momentarily improves matters.
I turn habits into a practice. I turn habit into a ritual. I am time bound...
Stumped, and discarding previous post drafts, I stomped into the kitchen. And found myself caressing the kettle. A refill pot of coffee was made. Seeing the coffee, how amazing (!) in exactly the place it was easily accessed on the shelf, with a little black plastic spoon ready to spoon it into the filter jug. A title homed out of the steam . Homing or habits?
Ah! Looking at my habitual behaviors - then widening them out to include others' including the pigeon in the cherry tree, the woodlouse and my favorite farmer - I see every one of their habits is really about homing...
Keys being homed is probably the most common one for two-leggeds like us.
Seems to me that this kind of homing - I'm also thinking of the 'homing in' the goldfinches do when feeding every morning. It's often instinctive but also, critically, adapts to the context of the moment.
When I'm not aware of context my habits become automatic. Typically, habits assume context is static. And the context is always changing and I'm not the only one involved in it.
Perhaps this sounds as if I'm being pedantic about semantics. But homing has a different energy.
It's unforced and there's a love in it. Homing things. Fingers appreciate the feel of keys and hanging them on their hook that's the perfect place for them... I'm unselfconsciously but utterly consciously inhabiting where I am. There's also a degree of not-knowing - is this definitely going to happen today or is today my keys decide I'm not homing consciously enough and hide somewhere like in the freezer?!
Very difficult to put into words, except I'd rather be homing than trying to make something a habit! Nevertheless, we DO call these habitual behaviors habits. And I think there is a way to wear them which includes this 'homing' aspect - see tomorrow's post [so not ALL my discarded bits from draft posts were rubbish!]
Footnote: the roots of the word 'strategy' are based in military operations and specifically relate to winning (and planning to 'win'). Homing involves everything that is being 'homed' in the moment, redolent with its unique ever-changing context.
#habits #context #strategy #language