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Key points
- Our brains are marvelously adaptable to new experiences.
- However, this flexibility can lead to acceptance, unresponsiveness, and a lack of simple pleasure.
- Overcome this tendency with simple exercises to awaken wonder.
I was a starstruck fan the first time I ran into Quentin Tarantino, my all-time favorite director, in a neighborhood cafe. I introduced myself and said how much I admired his films.
Not long after, I spotted Tarantino a second time while on my morning jog. He was strolling on a path filled with young mothers and babies in a Tel Aviv park.
Our brains are wired for novelty, making them less excited as familiarity increases. So, spotting Tarantino far from Hollywood Hills for a second time didn’t thrill me as much (yet it was still an immense privilege.).
Such experiences illustrate how brains adapt to novel experiences—and how that adaptability may dampen our ability to respond to a threat or even let happiness fill our hearts.
How does that happen? Can we trick our minds into not letting familiarity deaden life’s pleasures or staunch our righteous responses to injustice?
Neurons Drive Response
Our brains’ adaptability is critical to our evolution and survival. Certainly, our adaptable minds helped us quickly adjust to new routines in the COVID-19 pandemic, such as mask-wearing, social distancing, and heightened hygiene.
However, adaptability is not always desirable.
For example, we would want to avoid adapting to the presence of snakes or scorpions when hiking in a desert; that could be dangerous. Similarly, I do not want to get so used to living only a ten-minute walk from the Mediterranean Sea that I become indifferent to its beauty.
A new stimulus—the first mango you taste, the first drop of blood you see, or your first rollercoaster ride—elicits a maximal response from your brain’s neurons. More neurons will respond to a novel event and be stronger than when the newness wears off.
With less neuronal activation comes reduced release of neurotransmitters such as dopamine, which is the chemical that helps us feel the rush from an unusual, fresh, or rare experience.
So, the same mechanism that helps us respond quickly to earthquakes or hurricanes once we have experienced a few also means we enjoy the movie Pulp Fiction a little less the second time or consume our favorite ice cream almost mindlessly.
Becoming inured to what we like also happens in situations with more significant consequences. For example, we can grow weary of relationships or careers because they are no longer fresh.
This powerful gift to acclimate comes at the price of enjoying the good stuff less when it becomes familiar—a painful tradeoff.
Resisting Evolution’s Molding of Our Minds
Our ennui poses a more profound threat. Do we also want to get used to all kinds of bad?
Reports of domestic violence, motor vehicle fatalities, and injustices have become so commonplace that we don’t always react with sadness or horror. Leaders invoke racism to divide nations or lie to retain their power. Tech giants are selling our personal information. Mass shootings in schools and places of worship. Once, these were shocking, unthinkable. Not anymore. We flip the channel or continue scrolling.
So, on the one hand, our adaptive mind has the beneficial capacity to get used to adversity. On the other hand, that same capacity can deprive us of sparks of happiness or lull us into inaction when situations should incite a vigorous response.
We can, though, trick this evolutionary tradeoff. We can exert control over our minds and our responses. We can enjoy familiar events as if experiencing them for the first time (imagine how life would be if every kiss felt like your first kiss.) or summon the will to resist in the face of immoral or dangerous situations.
How to Not Surrender to Familiarity
As in many mind challenges, mere awareness is a large part of the solution. Reading this post may already have you asking yourself what experiences no longer stir your heart as they once did.
We can hold the line against evolution’s weighting survival over joy in other ways. Some of these are:
- Seek wonder in the mundane. My late grandfather was a master of this. He was famous for making everyone at an extended family dinner halt for one long minute to contemplate something like the fork. What an invention. What would we do without it?
- As the artist Henri Matisse said, “Look at life with the eyes of a child.” Stop and think of your childhood questions about the world around you. Why is the sea blue one day and green the next? Why is the moon only a sliver some nights and full and luminous on others?
- Start or strengthen a meditation practice. There are many different meditative practices you can try.
- Open yourself up to forces that can jolt us into awareness of our indifference or lack of response to injustice.
- Consciously shut down your brain’s continuous reference to what’s stored in your memory and experience. Enjoy a flowering bush, a vibrant sunset, or ducks swimming in a city pond.
I think of my grandfather when I marvel aloud at how I can email Australia and get a response in minutes: “Boy, this internet thing is amazing.”
My students chuckle. But perhaps they’d be better off sharing my astonishment, even for only a moment, so they become aware of things they have mindlessly adapted to.
