Those Damn Habits!

Seriously, America. How much is too much?

Lifted Ford F250’s with mud tires used to drive on perfectly paved roads, a whole aisle at the grocery store dedicated to pop tarts and rice crispy treats, construction zones to widen the highway (again…), multiple jobs to pay off student loans (and online shopping bills), absurd amounts of money for healthcare in a culture that emphasizes fast food- something’s fishy here.

If you don’t think this is an excessive culture, you might have gone to sleep with the Blue pill.

Yeah, the Matrix is a real thing… It’s not a movie and it’s not the Metaverse- although, this sure seems like an attempt to get even closer to what the movie was portraying.

All joking aside, reverse culture shock is definitely a thing. As you can tell, I’ve experienced it. In wake of this, I have come to question things that are ¨normal.¨ Why are they normal? Why are the aforementioned normal even though we can admit they are kind of pointless and in some ways harmful?

What’s more important than our nonsensical cultural norms, though, are the personal habits we carry. Obviously, they are the building blocks for the culture.

There are most likely too many things to count in your life that have become a habit. Down to the smallest detail. Which is not a bad thing at all. Imagine if you had to remember how to brush your teeth everyday or, better yet, remember how to walk. I would consider these healthy habits that have been graciously wired deep into the circuitry of the nervous system.

Where the tides turn, is when the habit meets the evolutionary impulse of nature. We can recount many stories of history where everyone was basically engulfed in their work thinking ¨This is the way! This is the way. This is just the way, no question ‘bout it.¨

Then, there was that one oddball that came along with a statement that would ruin everything and shake the habit loose, saying, ¨guys, come on, there’s much more than this!¨ ¨Whoa… whoa… whoa… guy. Slow your role¨, they’d say. ¨We’re trying to maintain a status quo, here!¨

Maybe it wouldn’t be exactly like this, but in essence, this is how it went. They’d ostracize the oddball, outcast him or her to lands far away or even murder them in the most extreme cases. But, one day… one day they would see that the oddball was onto something. They would see that she meant well and they would feel the remorse of continuing to live in ignorance when they had the answer the whole time. They would have an awakening.

What if this is happening all the time, though? Well, I’ll just spoil the sliver of suspense by saying that it is happening all the time. Not just in our culture, but in you. This conversation is happening in you, daily. Think about that one.

What if ¨normal¨, wasn’t normal at all? What if normal was where you are asleep to life?

Habits are good for many things, but even your favorite song gets old at some point.