The habit is given to us from above. It is said that it takes about three weeks to form – or a little longer. I remember how my female colleagues in my office refused sweets for exactly 21 days and carefully crossed out the dates in the office calendar. They had no need to lose weight, but what can you do – fashion. But how happy designer Olya was, to whom I later presented a set of colorful chocolates! Let’s assume that she was delighted by the colorful palette of packages. And our friend, the architect, wherever fate throws him, has a habit of always visiting the museum of local lore. This is to make sure that a mammoth tooth is on display there: supposedly there is such an exhibit in any local history exhibition. I know a family that rides on every Ferris wheel they come across on their hiking trip. They haven’t been stuck at the top yet, but I think they have everything ahead of them. I do not share my love for fossil teeth and observation wheels, I have my own habits, and not all of them are harmful.
You’ll laugh, but I’m used to doing warm-ups in the morning. As yoga instructors like to say, the most difficult thing in this process is to spread the mat. Therefore, it is better to deceive yourself and pretend that you will make only a few movements without tension. But then it becomes a shame for those muscle groups and ligaments that were left out of the event, and everything goes according to the full program. When I was young, I believed all sorts of dashing statements that “daily morning exercises will protect you from future age-related problems with the musculoskeletal system.” Of course, this is a lie. It won’t save you. Especially if you periodically experiment with jumping over forest ditches or, like my husband, ask yourself: “Will I lift this stone?” However, you can not dismiss the phrase of one of my old “well-wishers”, who asked with undisguised sarcasm: “Well, you’ve been doing exercises for 35 years and what have you achieved-That? Absolutely nothing! That’s how it was, and that’s how it remains!”
In new cities, I usually go to the market. The local specialties are beautifully laid out there, you can chat with the old ladies of the zoned varieties, and in general everything is lively and somehow real, including the so-called general level of dirt. It helps to assess the habits of local residents. As you know, sometimes everything is decorous and noble in the central square, but the swamp plague is just a stone’s throw away. In other words, the market is a kind of slice of real life. And sometimes he’s even very cute. I remember in Bukhara we were amazed at the neatness of the oriental bazaar and the beauty of the local saleswomen: chiseled features, velvety eyes, graceful hands. Such young ladies should not sell cakes, but tell tales about Aladdin! My husband even took stealthy photos. However, the models didn’t mind at all. There was also a special row where old grandfathers sat with sharp knives and deftly whittled yellow carrots into perfect strips. It’s for pilaf. For everyone who wants for a little money. Of course, we gamely bought the same knife – it’s called “pchak”. And now I chop vegetables only according to the method of Uzbek elders.
My son had a habit of taking a six–week intensive English course every spring to “freshen his tongue.” One day I decided to join him, but I met with strong resistance.: “Here’s another one! You already know English, there’s nothing for you to do there. You’d better sign up for some Italian.” And I signed up. Six weeks of Italian intensive training from scratch divided my life into “before” and “after”. The language turned out to be rich, interesting and very complex. In the first weeks, I desperately crammed the conjugations of irregular verbs and memorized unthinkable words. Like barbabietola (“beetroot”) or abbigliamento (“clothes”). I taught everywhere: at home, in transport, on a walk. There was no room for reading and movies in the brain anymore. After a month of this nightmare, I realized that I was going crazy soon. But she got used to it, and two weeks later, stammering and making mistakes, she retold some simple novel by Boccaccio. Then, of course, I studied in a more humane mode, and now I’m willing to translate from Italian. I even taught my restless husband a little bit of this language, and now we habitually exchange Italian phrases if the conversation is not for other people’s ears.
It turns out that one habit leads to another. I’ve suffered through the Italian wilderness, but I’ve acquired the skill of learning foreign languages, the love of the process, and the habit of cheering myself up by reading a poem by Gianni Rodari or deciphering jokes by Adriano Celentano. It turns out that this is very exciting, but not every language has love to the grave. For some reason, some of them disappear as soon as you stop studying, as it happened to me with German. But Finnish was very hard to remember, and then it stuck in my mind just as tightly and did not hurry to leave, which I am very glad of.
The line between habits, traditions, and rituals is quite thin. Ritual is the most optional thing. Psychologists even scold rituals with all sorts of bad words like “superstition.” But who is free from this? Tourists throw coins into fountains, actors kiss the stage, and world chess champion Alexander Alekhine gave his Siamese cat a sniff before the game. And I chose my debut based on feline behavior. By the way, the cat’s name was Chess – on the subject of foreign languages.
But if rituals are laughed at, then the opposite is true with traditions: they are necessary. Ethnographers generally believe that an ethnic group exists as long as people celebrate traditional holidays. If this practice is forcibly interrupted, it will be more difficult for the community to survive. I remember being amazed by the countless women with flowers in Yerevan on April 7. Everyone was with bouquets and bouquets, from first-graders to old ladies. The streets are full of roses, daffodils, violets… And almost everyone I met was walking with a cake in his hands. It turns out that on April 7, the Day of the Annunciation, there is an old tradition in Armenia to celebrate Motherhood and Beauty Day.
And we in the family have a custom on February 1 to celebrate Imbolc, the oldest Celtic holiday of the birth of spring. It’s just halfway between the longest December night and the vernal equinox. It is necessary to turn on the lights everywhere, serve a large cheese plate and freshly baked bread to the table, but before that, thoroughly wash the whole house, including livestock. There were usually problems with this item of the program: our small tailed predators did not want to wash. Of course, spring is already a fait accompli now, but when you wait for it, you prepare for the meeting in all international historical ways.
There is also such a separate topic as professional habits. Sometimes they look funny: my aunt, a doctor of chemical sciences, mixed cocktails at a festive table, holding a glass at eye level and pouring ingredients into it with an iron hand. Just like Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, Marie Curie and Dmitry Mendeleev in one vessel!
Everyone remembers investigator Zheglov, who habitually hid folders with documents from prying eyes, and Balzac’s father Goriot used to smell bread before eating: the old man had been selling wheat for many years and determined the grade of flour by smell. A seamstress I knew always checked clothes on the seam treatment, and the great Michael Faraday was rumored to have a habit of carrying a magnet in his pocket. Like he’ll take it out, think about it, and hide it back. That’s how I came up with the electric motor. And I automatically evaluate brand names, slogans, and headlines– that’s the job. Then, frankly, I forward the most spectacular options to my colleagues. It can be a lot of fun. For example, in one print publication there was a headline “The perfect portrait of a leader.” The author clearly had in mind the “Portrait of an ideal leader,” and not a tutorial for novice portrait painters. But what a joy it is to see headlines like “Horns galore,” “Is it easy to be young for so long?” or even “Strawberries with the cream of society.” Do you like “The Lady with Comedies”? I can go on for a long time, I have a lot of phrases and phrases in stock. After all, such habits sometimes grow into a collection. But that’s a completely different story.