Habits and the likes of them!

Most things that you have grown a sense of familiarity with, eventually change, be it for the better or worse. Along the way they expect you to get accustomed to it. If not, simply accept it. Eventually you will get comfortable with the change and wham! before you know it, you are faced with yet another paradigm shift, yet again! However, as is the irony of existence, there are certain things you do want to change. And they are the ones that seem to stick with you. For the sake of making it sound better we call them 'habits'.. and for the sake of those of us, who make excessive use (read misuse) of the habit of habit, we add an adjective and call them bad habits. And pledge to get rid of them. At least try to. Or to the very least we want to. Or so we say!

Most 'bad habits' however, seem to give 'change' a tough time. The only adversary perhaps that has actually challenged change and more often than not, won! For once its mighty manoeuvres fail to imperceptibly spread its shrouded wings and catch your now-almost-second-nature unawares. This is the other end of the spectrum infact, where you  actually have to strive, to even bring about a minute change. And once you are caught offguard, wham! ur habit-friend stares right back at you, even smiles...the impish, crooked one. 'I told u, all that effort was futile'!

We usually find it so difficult to embrace change, as we know it, precisely for that reason. Because we don't know what we will chance upon. After all, no one likes being thrown out of their comfort zones, to be faced with a new idea of survival altogether. Even if you don't like what you have now, at least you know. And knowing can be a very very cozy feeling. And i say that inspite of myself. Inspite of my almost uncanny knack for newness. Familiarity can still be very comforting.

Hence we keep reverting to our habits. Good, bad, ugly...all of them. I've seen a lot of relationships hold through for a few years longer, before they actually crumpled to dust, simply because two people had become a habit to each other. Now that's not a bad thing as long as there are more reasons. However, when the habit is the only reason, that's when the alarm bells start sounding...and i have witnessed them wreck havoc in many a people's lives. Its mostly because you know what you are coming home to. Most not-so-happy marriages have stuck through because of the same warm-cozy familiarity. Even if you came home to the most insinuating fight, you still came back home as you had known it, when you left. People have stayed on with the same job, in the same city, in the same house for the very same reason, inspite of all odds! As much as i like newness and the thrills of not knowing that it brings as perks, i still can relate and somewhere perhaps crave that familiarity too. And have mostly held on to it, till it has gotten the better of me! And it mostly has...

Like a friend says, those of us who have chosen the open roads over the comforts of homemade waffles, hardly have the luxury of settling in.

Sometimes, when i sit back and think, i'm amazed at how much we put up with because its simply simpler that way. Than to acknowledge change; and worse still embrace it. As a child i remember i'd be surprised how my parents would complain about the potholes, yet take the same road to work everyday. The road not taken' was afterall, just that! We complain and yet grudgingly go back to what we know we will complain about. A bad job, a sour relationship, a leaking house, unkind friends, pot-holed roads, shitty governments, all of it. It took 35 years for India's once-upon-a-time most intelligent and politically active state to figure out that authority needed to change hands. Not that it did much good, but that's another story altogether! And with all the hullabo that we do about wanting a better life you'd have thought we'd know better. We are  perhaps the only of God's creations that resist change so badly. All other creatures of Nature, are far more in tune with the idea, that God's most intelligent creation inevitably strives to shove into the attic, behind closed doors, and then put heavier boulders against it...lest it come out!
Afterall, denial, has always been an intelligent concept!

I've put up with bitten-unshaped nails for as long as i can remember. Its only today that i put nail-paint back on again. Just so that i stop!