– Inspired by the book Atomic Habits.
1. The Power of Habits and the Choices We Make
The power of habits is not a new concept. We observe it every day e.g. Jane always checks Aldi, Coles and Woolworths before making a purchase; Josh has a coffee every morning. However, we think less about how these will add up and impact us in the long term. Sure, everyone knows reducing screen time will mean better sleep and lead to better long-term health effects (and we still don’t effectively curb it), but habits can be insidious or advantageous in many other areas of our lives as well.
Consider this situation: Jake is risk-averse. So even though he likes art, when he picks his university course he picks the safe law degree and sticks to it while his friends change around. He gets a stable job and does not venture into startups. Every year, he keeps his head down and because he is risk-averse, he works hard to upgrade himself to be more relevant career-wise. He does a bit of art on the side but never thinks about spending too much time in visual arts or changing careers because it is too risky for his liking. He invests in bonds and a smaller amount in shares, most of it he keeps in the bank. He never invests in his friend’s winery or gold mines. Jake still lives a happy life though once in a blue moon he wonders about the other path he may have taken.
The risk averse person, unless they are aware of their tendencies and change their risk averse behaviour when making decisions, will keep choosing the path that is slightly less risky. This will veer their life in a certain direction. A confident and risk-taking person’s life choices – and even smaller choices would be radically different. Similarly, a person that does not recognise that they are unprepared will keep being unprepared. These choices will add up and move their life in a certain way.
2. 轮回之苦不在地狱，在人间。The suffering of saṃsāra is not in hell or another life, but right now.
Carl Jung says: Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. Little habits, conscious or unconscious, create little loops of effects, and these snowball into bigger and bigger effects until an accident happens.
Example: Jane leaves the cups on the counter at a precarious angle and thinks they should be fine, and that she will wash them later. Her pan is not placed back in the cupboard and the handle is sticking out from the ledge of the counter. She wears a thick coat in the middle of the kitchen since the heater is not turned on. She is also on her phone. She turns to get something and her thick coat gets caught on the pan handle, the pan spins and hits the cups which were misplaced and they fall and smash. Similar things keep happening to her, she drops her water bottles, her newly bought iPhone, and even her laptop. This will keep happening until something really bad happens and she decides to fix this.
Sometimes, we don’t even recognise that we are caught in the same habits and repeating behaviours or responses.
There is a concept in psychology called behavioural pattern, and that is linked to habits and heuristics. Examples include the famous attachment theory, how people continually choose partners that attract them but may not be the best for their overall wellbeing. Humans are drawn and attracted to certain things that feel familiar to us or make us happy – we need them in some way or another, at least it is good or feels good to us now. However, if we suffer for it, and we recognise we are worse off from it in the long-run, why do we continue to indulge in them? Why do we never change?
That, my friends, I believe is the true meaning of suffering of saṃsāra, or in Chinese: 轮回之苦 Lun hui zhi ku *. We continually fall into the same pattern of resolving things, and so many tiny little choices and habits are made based on the conscious and unconscious preferences (e.g. what worked in the past, what feels right etc). 轮回之苦 is not about repeating the sufferings in the afterlife or reliving the worst experience in hell, it is that people are repeating the same fate in many different ways and experiencing pain in all sorts of variations in the life they are living right now.
3. The Good News
There is usually a reason for how people adapted in different ways – due to their situations and environments, maybe a major event that altered their life views forever. Lucky for us, there isn’t one “good way” or “perfect way” to live our lives, there is only the life we want – banish the judgement from others!
The human capacity for change is incredible, and we can all nudge our futures in the direction we want it to be.
More on that next time!
2024.07.16
Reference:
*The first time I heard about the explanation of suffering of saṃsāra is briefly from 泽海命理水之道。