A creature of habit

I hate doing that......I woke up late today, 11.15 to be precise. I never do that despite rarely going to bed before 02.00 I'm always awake by 07.00. Life is too short to spend it asleep, we are a long time dead, a state that in my limited imagination must be like sleeping without the dreams. There is too much to do in life to be asleep.

We humans are a strange breed, creatures of habit, this one small change in my routine has rendered me flumoxed. I have wandered around getting nowhere, keep looking at the clock wondering where the day is going so fast and thinking of all the things I wanted to do today that now won't get done!

In the workplace we all merrily claim to 'embrace change easily', we all include similarly blase statements in our C.V because we know employers expect it of us. In reality when the slightest thing is changed and our normal day to day work routine is disrupted we hate it and most complain bitterly. The change may be for the better (though frequently with employers it is not), but it is not the change itself that we dislike it is the fear of that change and of the anxiety that creates. We do not like the unknown. This is so much the case that there are now highly qualified psychologists and behaviourists that specialise in the management of change, in teaching us and those that force it upon us how to face the inherent fear we carry.

And yet, when forced, as a race we are perversely, extremely adaptable. In times of war and great challenge for instance we manage to adapt marvelously and deal with whatever life throws at us. In our personal lives too, when change is forced upon us we adapt with remarkable speed. As an individual I have had significant changes in lifestyle forced upon me twice, that had I tried to imagine would have terrified me. I would have balked and avoided them at all costs, but none the less once in the situation, in what seems a blink of an eye, the apparently terrifying situation becomes the norm and often a positive thing.

Coping with change is like many of our traits a matter of practice, those who's lives dictate much change will become 'practiced' at it, at dealing with the anxiety it creates until such a time they no longer have fear of it and embrace it. The rest of us who's day to day lives by necessity are made up of routines continue not to gain that practice and continue to be happy in those routines.

One late wakening and my day is completely upended........ We are indeed a strange and contradictory breed, or at least I am!