last monday's post (19 nov)

HABIT

In India, if you visit someone’s home a cup of tea will be served sans the formality of asking whether you want it. But it is a custom that agreed with me for I simply loved tea. Perhaps it was a habit picked up in childhood whilst going with my father for radio recordings of theatrical and music shows. By the time I was in college, I would down at least a dozen cups of tea in a day.

But, habits do hurt! A splitting headache would seize me if I missed my afternoon cup of tea. And my predicament was worst while on a trek in the Sahayadris. I would start off cheerfully but by afternoon my migraine would have developed deadly dimensions. There were two options before me: quit trekking or break the tea habit. I chose the latter.

It was traumatic: my nerves were on tenterhooks, my mood was edgy all day long and the withdrawal symptoms had turned me into a jittery mess! Over a month, I held my resolve and was able to get out of the habit. The liberation from the habit was a major learning. I realised that habits are born out of the conditioning of our psyche. And hence the habit needs to be divorced in the mind before the body can be freed.

More importantly, we need to stop becoming slaves of habit. I have now learnt to accept and enjoy tea with or without sugar, with or without milk, with or without flavours or coffee in all its variants or juices of all types or plain water, too. If we embrace the wide spectrum of plurality, habits have no space to form. So whether it is food, drink, music or any choices, choose not to be a victim of habit by keeping an open attitude toward every new thing that comes before you.

Whether it is things we like or technology we use, we must ensure that we do not become slaves of habit. Therefore we must try out the changing choices. We should break the conditioning of the mind and empower our self-belief. By exploring the various dimensions, we will develop a fuller personality that can adapt to every emerging change and challenge… because we will be habit free!

No habit can seize us without our compliance and permission,
Let’s break every conditioning to ‘develop new dimensions’!

--- Pravin
19 November 2007, Goa.