Habits Die Hard

I just cannot understand why people fuss about habits. I simply refuse to accept this widespread and universally accepted theory that habits are bad. I challenge one single person on this planet who has not formed a single habit to come forward and prove himself or herself or itself. From my infancy, I have been observing how you are forced into habits. My mother worked really hard on me to ensure that I do not wet my clothes and I understood the use of bathrooms as quickly as I could. Well, I obliged my mother and began using the bathroom well before I was one year old. She, however, did not stop at that and forced me to quit the milk bottle as she had to fill it up for me all the time. She made me wear my own clothes and a lot of many things. She always said “ Don’t do that, it is bad. Do this, it is good.”

We learn to form habits right when we are born, and we blindly accept that what our elders classify as good habits and bad habits is the right version. At school, we are given another set of good and bad habits. First, it was brush your teeth every day and soon it became brush twice every day and now I am alarmed when I hear advertisements from toothbrush and toothpaste companies asking us to brush after every meal or every time you eat something.

When I grew up to think for myself, I decided that I will decide what is good and bad for me, not what people say is good or bad. I will form habits that I like and dislike. Do you understand? Both good and bad habits have to be practised before it becomes a habit. 

There were some habits that were, I understood, very bad. So bad that if you form any or all of those habits you become a bad character and will be despised by everyone. Now, I refused to accept this logic. How can one or more habits make a person bad? Does this mean that to be a good person you must have only good habits? 

Smoking, we are told is a very bad habit and smokers all over the world are the most harassed lot. Wives nag husbands who smoke, to the extent that I know wives who have divorced their smoking husbands just for that! I wonder why? If smoking is injurious to health it the smoker who suffers. Why is there no sympathy for the poor chap who is hell-bent on killing himself?

Drinking, we are told is a very bad habit and drunkards all over the world are also harassed. Parents are ashamed that their wards are addicted to drinking alcohol. Wives are fearful of their husbands drinking for they may create a scene anywhere after a third or fourth peg of Whiskey or Scotch. Devdas, we read and see in the movies is the eternal template for what could happen to drunkards. We have our sympathies for him because he was driven to drinking by the woman he loved. People drink in joy, sorrow, achievement, failure, any reason is good. Nowadays, children are encouraged by their parents, even girls in India consider drinking as good for social life. Has the definition changed? Why then did our forefathers consider drinking as a bad habit.

The last straw on my back, before I threw out the established theories about good and bad habits was when I started hearing that the food habits we had formed over years, habits that our parents lovingly cultivated in us, are in fact bad!

Can you beat it? The chapati that you eat is high carb and therefore harmful as a habit. The rice has starch and sugar that can cause incalculable harm if you are a habitual rice eater. The dal which you so relish can be contaminated and not organic. I can go on and on, the list is endless and if I take all this as the ultimate truth, I will end up starving and die a premature death!

I am, my friends, addicted to so many things and If addiction is bad, then I am a bad person. I have consciously formed certain habits that I believed will keep me in good health. From a meat-eating mammal, I turned into a Vegan. Vegans, I am told are the best amongst the living human beings. I sacrificed a lot to become a Vegan. All that I had enjoyed as tasty and delicious I gave up. I no longer indulge in Mac D or Dominoes. I no longer look at ice-creams and chocolates. I no longer drink tea or coffee. I no longer drink milk. Yes, I have rid myself of all that is bad and embraced all that is good.

Have I become a good man, a good human being? I don’t know for there seems to be no universality in defining a person as a good human being.