Finding A Pop
“Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” - Warren Buffet
There is no quintessential movie snack like popcorn. Unlike most snacks, people like to munch on popcorn for a long time, making movie-watching even more active and enriching. Popcorn has been a favorite since childhood, but my relationship with the snack has been ambivalent during the last few months. It is due to the sour aftertaste left by the popcorn’s dryness, with the butter acting as a catalyst. I try substituting the dryness for something more juicer, like pickled jalapeños, but it does not solve the problem entirely. Not knowing how I should deal with this atypical problem, I decided to take a significant step - to mercilessly cut down on eating popcorn and evaluate the changes.
However, I have not abandoned popcorn in its entirety. I like to eat the skinny pop occasionally, which helps me get food without unhealthy cholesterol. The movie theatre popcorn, however, I have drastically reduced. I would go from completing a tub of popcorn all by myself to barely completing a small bag and leaving a good chunk of popcorn in the bag. Contrary to my claim, as mentioned earlier, I feel even more engaged in watching a movie without eating the popcorn than eating it. It helped me give my undivided attention to the film. I have always believed that my attention span during movies has been depleted, regardless of the movie’s merit. I needed a constant activity like chewing on popcorn to keep myself active. But, after giving up on movie theatre popcorn, I felt that I could focus on movies and was way better than before.
On a more significant note, my relationship with popcorn is a great metric to gauge my journey with habit building, particularly habits catered toward fun. I have always felt vacuous about having fun for most of my life. For instance, Friday nights are the only time I have fun at home. But I spend most of the time scrolling on my laptop and watching TV with my parents. While it is quite a common way to spend time, what was unadmirable is that, like the popcorn, I had a sour aftertaste when I look back at the many Friday nights of the past few years. I was always told to do fun and enriching things, but I never understood how to find the latter without losing the former. In other words, I was very zombie-like, and my perception of fun was very bland.
When people ask me what I would like to do for fun, I always blurted out watching movies and reading books without much thought or heft. I have always felt like an imposter since I have never embraced either of these actions. At the very worst, I thought that these activities were my substitutes for drinking and partying as they were my ways of having short-lived pleasures. But, as I reflected on my habits’ equivalence, I noticed something even more profound. Most of my friends and family friends who occasionally drank always had some side effects following them, ranging from something short like a day-long hangover to something as long-lasting as cancer. But I never had a sour aftertaste after watching a movie or book. While there are some bad apples, I never regret the experience and would do it again without skipping a beat.
A shortcoming of my fun interventions is that they are primarily enjoyed in solitude. While watching movies is somewhat communal, I never hesitate to watch a movie alone and would go to any lengths to do so. This is one place where I feel drinking has the upper hand, as it can lead to rapid socialization. As I am craving more social connections, I believe I should find a way to optimize my fun interventions to accommodate my societal needs. I have been exploring some potential activities, such as playing a sport or joining a club. While yielding apprehensive results, I am still keen on finding more social hobbies ideal for my interests.
In hindsight, I do feel like I am very open to experimenting with new hobbies and seeing if I want to pursue them in the long run. For instance, I tried to have a more eclectic music palette and explored various artists’ discographies. But, I failed to be consistent in the long run, so I abandoned it to focus on other exciting things. In contrast, a habit that I managed to get back to is running, and over time, my goals have become more ambitious, and it is something I want to imbibe in my lifestyle. Again, going back to the previous paragraph, these are very individual-focused activities best enjoyed in solitude, and I am looking to find a way to integrate a social aspect into these hobbies. Besides exploring new hobbies, I also began to view my preexisting hobbies of watching movies and reading books through a newer lens. Instead of seeing them as mechanical, I began to embrace every book I read and every film I watched. As a result, not only did I feel at peace in finding things I enjoy, but it also gave me room to explore and experiment with newer hobbies.
While my journey with discovering my hobbies has no definite ending and is ever evolving, one thing for sure is that I have a newfound curiosity about finding fun and enriching things to do in life. If I had continued to walk down the rabbit hole of not assessing my habits, I would’ve never taken better steps toward exploring my interests. I would have continued having a limited worldview. Like my efforts towards curbing my cravings for movie theatre popcorn, sometimes it is essential to take bold and radical steps toward self-improvement. While it might seem fearful at first, and we are burdened with self-doubt, if we end up practicing with the right amount of willpower, it will be more fulfilling in the long run, and unlike movie theatre popcorn, it would not be left with a bad aftertaste.