Falling into habit

The Maison de Balzac (Balzac's former house) ... I'll go in eventuallyNear the beginning of this semester, I wrote a blog entry about my walk to school, and the interesting things I sometimes noticed on the way, crossing the Pont de Grenelle: a film-crew, a “pigeon-man,” a woman leading miniature ponies. Though I actually saw the woman with the ponies again a few days ago, walking towards the bridge, I feel like my heightened awareness, which came from the newness of living in Paris—of crossing the Seine to get to class—has gradually faded over the course of my time here. For a while, I tried to make myself notice one new or interesting thing on every walk to school; recently, though, I’ve usually been focused on nothing but making it to class on time: how many minutes do I have? will the light change soon? and why won’t these people in front of me walk any faster?

Reading de Botton’s “On Habit,” I was struck that his descriptions of the new and exciting becoming mundane sounded so familiar. We become “settled in our expectations”; we grow “habituated and therefore blind to” what’s around us, what used to be so exciting and unknown. I forget about the quaint house mixed in with all the skyscrapers on the right bank of the Seine; I hurry past the Maison de Balzac, with its beautiful little garden, telling myself one day I’ll stop in to look around or sit on a bench reading (maybe one day when it isn’t raining). As de Botton writes, I reduce my awareness to only a few things, the absolute necessities for getting from my apartment to my classroom without being late or completely out of breath. I miss the beginning of my time in Paris, when my awareness of the city and all its small quirks was much more open.

And yet it can sometimes be hard to retain “the travelling mind-set” to our own quotidian lives, our own neighborhoods and well-trodden routes. Of course, I still love wandering around a little area of Paris, an unfamiliar pocket of an increasingly familiar city; holding on to this attitude, this receptivity to discovery, doesn’t always fit in with the tasks and stresses of everyday. Perhaps, in my last two weeks in Paris, I should just leave my apartment a few minutes earlier, so I have the time and the concentration to notice more than the pavement in front of me on my way to school.

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