As I was walking down the escalator, I was not very mindful of how I was walking as my habit loop was there to keep under control. I noticed that a young lady clad in heavy black coat, standing at the corner where the escalator meets the corridor which leads to the turnstile to enter the subway platform. I did not mind too much about her reasoning for being there and so I took a left and began walking towards the turnstile. At the very moment a thought popped into my head as I watching the stranger in front of me pulling out his wallet from his back pocket and I was about to do the same.... Why do men keep their wallets in their back pocket? ( and this includes me) This popped up because for split second, I was observation my self from then point of view of the young lady and she must be perplexed by the fact that two very unrelated men, about to enter the subway, follow the exact same routine even though it's not exactly convenient. She must be asking herself, why in the world would you make things more complicated for yourself?
The anecdote above reflects my baffling awe at how unaware we are all about many things we just learn from by watching others. One of the key ideas in learning theory is the fact that we blatantly copy each other and so learn simple things here and there; after 13/14 years of copying, we decide that we are the master of all that exists, only to return to blatant copying after our tens. Copying is actually not as bad as most of us think it to, like when you copy your friends exam answers, because in the bigger picture of our lives, its foolish to solve a problem twice because not only do we lose time, but at the same time we could have been focusing on a much pressing problem. It is similar to our brain structure where regular activities are encoded in steps which can just be executed with little thought and correction. This in turns mean that our brains do not have to freak out everyday when we drive our car out of the garage, like our virgin drive.
But the problem arises from the fact that we have developed a habit of making everything a habit, mostly the bad ones. So let's go back to the wallet issue for a moment, as far back as I remember, my dad always used pack his wallet in his back pocket and I always wanted to do the same. So after a score of years, I am doing exactly the same thing. When I find it uncomfortable to use the wall at w/ some trousers, I stop wearing it, unconsciously. So the question is, why don't I rather change where I store my wallet or dissolve the reasons for carrying it?
I don't know..... But it seems to me that my brain thinks it is unnecessary to try to solve it as I have bigger fish to fry.... Or do I? The bigger question is how should be define big?
