“The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.”
― Albert Camus
Do our memories have to get worse with aging? Absolutely not! The more memory gets neglected, like anything else, the worse it gets. Usually when people leave educational settings they may not use their memories as actively. Information in real life is seldom as neatly organized or structured as in academia and most jobs depend on experience, loyalty, predictability and reliability far more than being imaginative. Our memory may get worse with aging, but only because we allow it to deteriorate. We let that happen to ourselves and to our memory because of ingrained habits.
An important aspect of our aging journey is to understand our habits, our accustomed attitudes and familiar behaviors with their comforting customary reactions and conditioned reflexes. Our mental, physical and emotional repertoire consists almost completely of habits and we cannot fully know ourselves until we have studied all our habits. Habits do not deteriorate over time; rather, they help establish routines. Routines use the template of yesterday and reproduce it over and over. Routines provide mental economy since pondering unimportant matters is a waste of time and effort. In addition, there is safety in certain habitual actions such as looking both ways before crossing the street. But habit also spares us from the uncertainty of adaptation. It supplies a ready answer before we are asked a question and gives us a comfortable response to any stimulus. Sometimes a person with advanced dementia can interact with others without revealing the severity of the impairment because their generic social habits and routines are so polished.
Habit is even more necessary for idle and inactive people because it fills mental stagnation and boredom with the rigor of a clearly defined timetable. Habit comfortably takes the place of creativity. The more our mental life is diminished the more essential the role of habit becomes because it helps relieve our mental shortcomings. But this strategy only works when circumstances are stable and predictable. For young people the rules of life are indistinct and there is plenty of room for risk taking, spontaneity and improvisation. For an older person it is more comfortable to rely upon tried formulas and familiar modus operandi.
Habit provides comfort and security. Each day and every action will be a safe and predictable repetition. Because habits provide the shields and safeguards to anxiety by making the future more predictable and less uncertain they can become the focus of anxiety. Clinging to habits implies an attachment to possessions and to ownership as a guarantee of security and identity.
The observation and study of our habits is especially difficult because they are so familiar and transparent to us. The comfort of habit creates a pleasant anesthetic sense that hides the stifling power of the habitual routine. It is like being a fish and trying to appreciate the nature of water. We must somehow create a space where we can observe the nature of our habits and the profound influence they have on us and on our behavior. Initially this is a nonjudgmental recording of our reactions to various circumstances. It may be useful as well as surprisingly accurate to assume that all our actions are habitual and watch the nature, type and extent of our pre-patterned reactions and conditioned responses.
Habits shield us from a deeper knowledge of ourselves. We acquire them from late childhood and through our schooling and cultural conditioning. We imitate those behaviors that we admire in others and we develop additional comforting, cushioning habits of thought, word and deed. The desire to maintain a comfortable and stable life helps us to create additional habits that cushion us from unpleasantness and uncertainty. We are unaware of our contradictions and feel a sleepy sense of inner peace. We feel that we are right and in charge. It is like we are wearing earphones playing our favorite sounds but these mask the soft inner voice of our spirit telling us to wake up and get on with our destiny.
It is very difficult to function without habits, but we must try to become aware of them to enable us to reduce their cushioning influence. Our inner life cannot grow and mature without surprises, shocks and jolts to our awareness and changes in our daily routines. We do not whet a knife with butter or strike a flint with rubber to produce a spark. Only unsettling inner events can help to awaken us and sharpen our memory.
