I GREW up with four sisters and all four sisters had six brothers each. Even so, growing up they’d all barge into the bathroom without knocking, start washing their hands, and THEN ask “Oh, is there somebody in here?” while you're screaming “Aaaahhhhhh!”. And why, of all the doors in a house, the shower door is the one made of glass? What peeping Tom came up with that idea?! I weighed up my options: I could either (a) never shower again, but that idea stinks; (b) continuously keep screaming “Aaaahhhhhh!”; but people would probably still barge in and eventually the police; or option (c) simply sing the whole time I’m in the shower. I chose option (c). Option (c) became such a well-practiced ritual it has often caused great embarrassment in public showers and at people’s houses. It became so habitual that a few years back one night after arriving late home from a gym session sweating like a pig (do they?) I didn’t shower. Why? Because I couldn’t be sure I wouldn’t wake up the other priests by breaking into very loud song.
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Singing in the shower is nothing more than a deeply ingrained habit from youth. Depending on whom you listen to, studies have shown between 85 to 95 per cent of everything we do in a day is done by habit; so habits are serious business.
First we make our habits, and then our habits make us, or break us. What’s the golden rule about bad habits? They cannot be broken, without being replaced. A bad habit many of us have picked up is being interested in things that don’t really matter. We “major in minors”. This would be of minor importance only for the fact that, because time is scarce this side of the grave, a result of majoring in minors is that we end up minoring in majors.
We’ve been trapped by this phenomenon recently with the ubiquitous “ball-tampering” incident. With so many opposed to other people protesting their sincerely held views and wanting to shut down social commentators who disagree with their views, we eventually end up with “the blind leading the blind” or the bland leading the bland and we become bored and annoyed the country is focused on a cricket ball being tampered with on the other side of the world.
But hey, how serious can majoring in minors be, right? As a priest, at people’s death beds, surprisingly their biggest regrets are often not the bad things they did, but the good things they didn’t do, but could have. Why didn’t they do these things? They were busy occupying their life with the little things that didn’t matter – they were majoring minors. I’m not throwing stones here; I’m often doing the same. However I realised just how sad our habit of majoring in minors can become while reading a poignant piece recently from fellow Fairfax writer, Ray Goodlass. Drawing on the musings of the ABC’s Barrie Cassidy, Mr Goodlass drew my attention to the horrendous case of a 10-year-old boy in indefinite detention in Australia’s asylum seeker processing centre on Nauru for the last five years. This traumatised child has repeatedly attempted suicide. More of us have been focused on a “ball-tampering” than a suicidal little boy.
Prime Minister Turnbull has expressed “very clearly and unequivocally” his concern about the events in South Africa. Good. Now he and all with power should express very clearly and unequivocally their concern about the events in Nauru. If they do it daily, it will become a good habit that brings good. And our vocation to build good habits isn’t over until the fat lady sings …. not the slender priest.
