Lynn got a small statue of a fox and her baby yesterday as a Mother's Day gift. Brain books have told me repeatedly that my brain knows more than I can tell. I have alerted several times today to a strange figure on our deck before I remembered it is that small fox statue.
It is surprising. I didn't try to memorize what is and what is not normal or "permitted" but parts of me are not accustomed to the statue. We have had foxes in our neighborhood so it is not impossible that there could be one out there. But what is interesting is that my eye finds it and focuses on it before I consciously know it is there.
I have thought before that a good example of having a habit that I didn't know I had relates to moving the trash can in a room. When I ball up a paper and throw it away, I toss the paper at the old location before I remember that the trash can isn't there anymore.
I wondered how my finding and reacting to the little statue relates to my age. I have my computer set to look up things with Duckduckgo but I keep finding that search results are more satisfying with Google search. I looked up "Are old people more habitual than younger people?" but I didn't find anything impressive. I am aware of the tendency of many popular writers to find a study that shows X and conclude that X is a reliable bit of information when strong counterexamples exist. This is the problem of the replication difficulties, especially in psychology and people-related subjects. Just because 55% of my sample did X as opposed to Y doesn't mean I should rely on that as a newly discovered rule of human behavior.
