Old Habits Die Hard

After a long wait I finally decided to write something again. There have been lot of issues that are urging me to pen my thoughts down but I am choosing to write on something that introduces a more philosophical touch to my thoughts. Thanks to my good observation ability that I have begun to realize that habits die hard.

Now first of all how do we define Habits? Habits are actions that progress from our consciousness to unconsciousness and that is probably the reason why they die hard. Because we are hardly aware of those actions that we begin to feel comfortable. We know that the laws of physics state that every entity in this universe tries to attain a state of maximum equilibrium and minimum energy, so this partly explains most of the things. Whenever an individual tries or even thinks of trying for a change, upheaval is caused inside the individual. Obviously who would think himself of trying to unsettle himself even when the change is for something good? What people don’t realize is that after disequilibrium, a state of calmness prevails. We just try to see the things superficially and not think of what lies beyond and often go wrong in interpreting most of the life situations – All that glitters is of course not gold. Bringing about a change is something getting out from the comfortable shoes that we have been wearing for many years and switching to the new ones which of course pinch at first. We try to distinguish between comfort and boredom without realizing they are the two sides of the same coin. It is said that bringing about change in oneself is easier than to bring it in the other but I beg to differ because it is equally difficult to change ourselves. To bring about a change in oneself you need to first repudiate your mind set because you just can’t simply say that what I have been doing or thinking for so many years is faulty and believing that we are infallible creatures. To question ourselves would mean to question our identity and that becomes impossible when we have already formed our identity.

A very valid question crops up that ‘Is the change really required?’ I really don’t have the potency to answer it because this is something person specific. Not many individuals would accept that they are not living their life as per their expectations. We need to first identify our expectations and that is something which goes all through our life i.e, to know ourselves fully. We find all kinds of people – those who think a time to change is due even when everything is going fine and as expected because life hardly follows the same and those who think that nothing is going as expected. Miserable are those who lie in between. But we must understand that change is the law of nature. It is an inevitable part of our life. The moment we try to question our ability to change or resist change, we hold ourselves responsible for our sluggish future. In the process we forget that “After a storm comes calm”.