Habits

My oldest daughter has gotten into the habit of chewing her fingernails, and is endeavoring to quit. Helping her through this and discussing it with her gave me reason to think a lot about habits in general.

When a little stream of water first starts running across the flat plains, its course would be pretty easy to change. Dig a little her, put a few rocks there, and bam – stream moves in a different direction. But give it a few thousand years to erode the land, carving it down deeper and deeper, and now changing the course of that river would take monumental effort.

That’s what habits are. Whether good or bad, when they start they’re easy to change. But over time they change you, altering the landscape of who you are. In time, they’re nigh-unchangeable.

That means they’re worth thinking about early. That’s why I make myself write every day, even if some days I don’t think I have anything worthwhile to say. I’m making this river change me.