Day 24: your most important habit?
What is the single most important habit you intend to cultivate in 2013?
Well, I’m going to cheat, and choose two. When I first saw this prompt, I thought ‘writing, of course’ – and then I saw somebody else’s response, and went ‘but I really ought to choose prayer, oughtn’t I?’
I can’t perform some mental sleight-of-hand and declare that actually they are the same thing, because they really aren’t. I could keep doing either of them without also doing the other. I want to do both of them for my own sake, but they aren’t particularly connected.
I want to do both. I want both to be the most important.
I want to write, and write, and write. It is one of those things that one only gets better at by practising, and I want so much to get better.
And I want to pray. I want to stop drifting away. I want to be anchored in reality, not floating around in fantastic ideas of who I think I am. I want to be opened up; and prayer is the way to do that.
These both seem like very inward-looking habits. They are: a habit that relies on somebody else, anybody else, is doomed to failure. Prayer is a habit that will turn me outwards, though. Writing makes me disagreeable and secretive; prayer makes me calm and joyful and friendly.
I do want to write next year. I want to write a lot. It can’t be my only habit, though, because it leaves me incomplete. If I had to choose, then, it would be prayer. But I don’t, so it’s both.
Kathleen Jowitt 