I know what’s going to happen later this morning. At 11 I will get into my car, drive to the local pond, feed the ducks, make an illegal U-turn and head back to the village where I will park outside the post office, walk up to the door, and find it locked. Then I will remember that today is the Veterans Day holiday.
By a certain age most of us are guided through the days by an inner automatic pilot. We call it force of habit. So the daily visit to the post office is not something that I plan or choose to do, it just happens.
Habits give us the charming illusion that we are in charge of our own lives – an illusion that is instantly shattered when the routine is interrupted. That’s why many people find vacations so stressful. Every tiny disruption can be unsettling. The closed door of the post office is like a stick suddenly placed in the path of an ant. What shall I do now? Without the mail to look at and grumble over there is an unanticipated gap in my morning routine. Maybe I will extend my walk to explore a new part of the nature reserve. But who knows what might happen out there? I could trip on a rock, break a leg, and wreck my entire routine for weeks ahead.
If that happened, the chain of causality would stretch all the way back to November the 9th, 1918, when Wilhelm II, Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia, was persuaded to give up his unfortunate habit of military conquest, and to abdicate. If the war had not ended then, the armistice would not have been signed on November 11, Armistice Day would not have fallen on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, President Eisenhower would not have transformed Armistice Day into Veterans Day, a legal holiday, in 1954, and I would not be standing outside the post office wondering what to do next. This is an historical example of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in physics, which can be described in pages of complex equations or in the more homely phrase: “You never know.”
Habits are useful, not only because they help us to ignore the chaos at the heart of the universe and get things done, but also because they prevent us from doing impulsive things that might have unpredictable consequences A large percentage of the trouble in the world seems to be caused by young people, mostly young men, who have nothing to do and no daily routine of duck feeding and post office visiting to keep their chaotic emotions under control.
The veterans, whose sacrifices we commemorate today, know that the military machine depends on an elaborate system of habits, starting with the habit of obedience. Without that there could be no wars, just or unjust. Kaiser Wilhelm was a fanatic for discipline, and made his army into an almost-but-not-quite invincible machine, only to be defeated in the end by the less disciplined armies of the Allies. History repeated itself in 1945.
Here is a most ingenious paradox. Habits are good because they give us a safe, orderly life. Habits are bad because they can turn us into unthinking robots and inhibit our creativity and sense of adventure. Bearing that in mind, and taking all the philosophical complexities into consideration, I think I’ll go to the post office – tomorrow.
Copyright: David Bouchier
