Relative Something

It’s funny, how time allows the best of intentions to succumb to our natural inclinations. I think it is pretty obvious that a vast majority of people evolve to a comfort zone of familiarity. We do a lot of things a particular way because that is the way we did it the time before. If something works, why change it? When you select your seat for lunch everyday, how often do you pick the same one you were in the day before? Do you park in the same space at your workplace everyday?

When it comes to stories about doing things a particular way, since that’s the way it’s always been done, I have a favorite. It involves a recipe being passed down through generations, on how to prepare a roast. When a daughter finally asks why the instructions say to cut the end off of the roast, Mom explains that she does it that way because her mother always did. Eventually it is revealed that Gramma started doing it because she didn’t have a big enough pan at the time to fit the whole thing. There are variations on that theme, but they all present the similar point.

One of the primary examples of a person with patterns, for me, was my father. There were certain ways that he did things, and there was a strong level of importance transmitted about not messin’ with his routine. He always sat at the head of the table where he kept a tray with his items of interest: ash tray, box of Kleenex, course-ground pepper, smoking pipe and paraphernalia. When he wasn’t around, it was the first place I wanted to sit. If we ever monkeyed around with anything on that tray, you can bet we understood the value of getting everything back the way we found it.

A long time ago in my life, I made a decision to specifically not do a lot of things in the same way my father did them. Many of them were pretty valuable health decisions involving diet, smoking, and alcohol. One of them was more frivolous. I wanted to intentionally NOT have one place where I sat at the table. I didn’t want to have one side of the bed that was mine. I wanted deliberate randomness.

Time, and my natural inclinations, overcame my intentions. I have developed many, many patterns, not the least of which is vividly revealed by my side of the bed.