Dead Habit

Once, a wanderer found a rare manuscript about a touchstone that could turn any common metal into pure gold. It revealed that the touchstone lay on the banks of a remote river, among thousands of pebbles that looked exactly like it. But, while the ordinary pebbles would be cold to touch, the touchstone would feel warm.

The man camped on the riverbank and began testing pebbles. Every time he picked a cold one, he threw it deep into the river. The ritual turned routine: pick a pebble… find it cold… throw it into the water… pick another… Many days later, he picked a warm pebble, but he threw it away before realizing his mistake. He had formed such a strong habit of throwing each pebble away that when the one he wanted came along, he threw it away!

So often, a similar story unfolds when we encounter opportunity. Unless we are vigilant, it is easy to fail to notice an opportunity even when it is in hand and it is just as easy to throw it away. Most of us await opportunity to knock on our doors, even if it is standing right before us. We falter in recognizing opportunity as we are numbed by dead habit.

Dead habit happens when we do things mechanically. We give up on maintaining focus on the task at hand. We must break the knotty vice-like grip of every dead habit. We are responsible for the choice that we make… we can be ritually reactive or we can be better off by being continuously and consistently responsive to the prospect of possible opportunity.

To BE BETTER at recognizing the possibility in hand,

We must break every dead habit’s numbed stand!

- Pravin K. Sabnis