Daylight saving time has got me thinking about how powerful forces outside ourselves can be. Most people I talk to regularly never say anything about daylight saving time and it hardly ever crosses my mind except when the clocks change. And yet it still happens twice a year with little to no real opposition, as if it were a fact of life (which it’s not since many countries don’t observe it and even a few US states have nothing to do with it). This isn’t the only thing that lots of people go along with automatically.
It’s easy to act in an automatic and reactionary manner. Culture, history, tradition, and expectations from your close circles exert a lot of pressure on you to act a certain way. That’s why there is much freedom in being able to act intentionally and proactively by being aware of your behavior and changing it if you’re dissatisfied with it. For example, some people strongly value certain traditions while others actively oppose them. I’m somewhere in between. While I certainly appreciate some traditions in my life (such as watching holiday movies and specials), I enjoy them for reasons other than the simple fact that they’re traditions. With any kind of tradition, I think it’s important to examine it and decide whether or not it’s worth doing. That way you can avoid becoming stuck in a routine or ritual that you’d rather avoid.
I hope this is coming across as I intended it to. I’m not trying to bash any of this stuff. If you’re familiar with some of my past posts on habits, you’ll know what I think about them. Good habits are incredibly useful and indispensable for effective living, but bad habits can be inefficient at best and disastrous at worst. That’s why I try to check in with myself once in a while to make sure that my habits are solid; if I see room for improvement, I’ll make improvements where I can. I want to be very intentional with how I live my life and a great way to do that is by building habits and routines around things that are worth doing. I’ve learned a lot about how to do this and I’m getting a little better at it every day.