Habits - Stephen Kilmer's Blog

Habitual loser: a habit that makes you a loser.  How do you form a habit?  You learn it by doing it over and over again.  It’s like brushing your teeth or going to work everyday.  It’s a habit, right?  Do you enjoy all those habits or are they routines?  Some you do and some you don’t and some are frowned upon by society and deemed wicked, unhealthy, or just plain evil.  But they are habits like the Nun’s wear.  Do you see the irony here or is it just me?  I am not a habitual person.  I make choices.  My dogs do thing habitually.  I make choices.  That’s why I have an opposable thumb, because I can make choices.  I have the ability to be logical.  My dog thinks with its mouth.  He has a habit of eating and sleeping and urinating on a routine basis.  Break that routine and he goes haywire and poops on the rug.  Does that make him a loser?

Okay I know your saying to yourself what does this all mean (or maybe not).  But if you are asking yourself what does this all mean then you are not a loser.  You are curious.  You don’t take things for granted.  You are asking the question why?  So why does the criminal system in America have a standard called habitual offender?  Shouldn’t it be HL (habitual loser)?  And if this person is an HL shouldn’t we give them a routine to live by?  Indulge me here for a moment as I take on the grievous crimes of stupidity. 

Example:  Our lab rat likes to drink.  He has learned to like to drink because the other rats think he’s funny and the girl rats that are also drinking become more amorous.   So drinking now becomes a habit and part of his daily routine.  He becomes an HL.  The police rat is looking for a certain type of behavior (he may be an HL also, but that’s a whole other burrito) and can smell a drunken rat for a country mile.  So he stops this HL and takes him to jail.  The judge fines him and puts him back out into the lab.  Is the rat going to change his routine?  Drinking made him funny and got him sex…I think not.  His habit will not change because no one has educated him.  And least of all no one has loved him.

Find me a rat that knows what love means.  That rat can take an HL and break any habit, because love is the cure.  Even the weak minded understand love.  Even a dog understands love and I would venture to say that even a rat understands love and can be trained to do quantum physics given the correct stimulus.  So how does this all come full circle by to a HL?  Here’s how: you give anything love and it will do more than form a habit, it will make a choice, and I guarantee you that that choice will be love.  The secret is that you have to give it love before it learns to love something else that is not healthy. 

Love early and love long.