Quirkisms, Idiosyncracies, and Rituals

Everyone is different. We are all special. We all do stupid, weird, random, or different things that set us apart entirely from other people, yet we tend to repeat ourselves often. You see the same people on your way to each class every day, the same people at the vending machines, the same people late to class, all usually doing pretty much the same thing. And then we complain our lives our boring. So why do the little repetitive things we do govern our lives?

People do things similarly or identically because they are unwilling to try something new. It's just so much easier to sleep in every day and be late to class than it is to push buttons on your alarm clock and get a few minutes less of sleep in order to be on time. Who wants to do anything new when they've got habits engrained in their mind? Not many people.

For example, my mom watches the news every night, eventually falling asleep in front of the TV. When I turn it off, she sits up, turns it on, and goes back to sleep. I think, "What the weird...", but it's habit. I turn on my radio to listen to music before I go to bed, while I'm falling asleep, after I wake up, and while I'm doing my homework. It's just weird to break the normal routine and turn it off.

If you've been around someone long enough, you know all their catch-phrases, their jokes, and the response they'll make to pretty much everything you do. If someone doesn't want to think about the conversation, they'll go on auto-pilot and respond the way they always have, just because it is easier. The little things repeated over and over constitute what people can expect us to be, in other words, our personalities. Although they will almost definitely change over time, every regular flip of the hair, comment to conversation, hand gesture, or flirtation device we use is frequently repeated and used until it becomes essentially part of us. And people don't generally relinquish parts of themselves too easily. Not without a fight.