Up until recently. We had a clock that was on a piece of furniture near the front door. It was a special little table clock, simple elegant and it kept good time. It was a gift from me to Catherine so many many years ago.
Recently, we cleaned up and partially reconfigured some rooms, adding decorative paintings and such. This happened a few weeks ago upon the arrival of my brother David and sister-in-law Lori Oliver. They help throw things out and put stuff in other spaces and stuff like that. Well in the process, they moved my clock.
I can’t say I was much help …I kept saying looks like a good day to go for a walk. But back to my clock.
For years, this clock has been over by the front door and every time i’d come down the stairs, I’d see the clock. Always there to glance at, quick time.
But now that it’s gone its usual place — it’s just two steps around the corner on the fireplace mantle — I keep looking for it.
It’s kind of like tricking myself when I set the clock ahead 10 minutes to get my carcass out of bed.
Again it’s practically autonomic in that your body starts reacting, adrenalin infusion even before your brain tells you ‘Relax, you built 10 minutes extra time into the wake-up program. ‘
Oh yeah! I smiled.
Then I started wondering.
Now I’ve been trained to look at that clock. As hard as I try not to look at that clock — because I know it’s not there — I still can’t help looking for that clock as I amble down the stairs. But every time I look for that clock. I’m aware that I’ve been lured, again, into a habit that I can’t stop.
When I started my first newspaper job at the Birmingham News in 1982, I was paid as a ‘part-time’ correspondent to cover Etowah, Calhoun and Talladega counties. Catherine and I rented a cheap house in the woods of Jacksonville off of Nesbitt Lake Road. The house had no central heat.
Space heaters were set up in some of the rooms. The rooms were tasty warm but the hallway was freezing. Whenever we had to get up for a glass of water, use the restroom or grab a late night stack, we had to come out into the 40-degree hallway which we responded to by autonomically clinching. Over the months this became ingrained. When I was promoted and we moved to Birmingham, we found a house with central heat. But guess what?
For months thereafter as we went out into the hall we would clinch, bracing ourselves for the expected chill.
Even our dog Pavlov got involved. Joke. Seriously our dog Maggie liked the warm rooms better but her first priority was to find humans wherever they might be.
So I’m left with the thought that I may be conditioned like in these examples to react a certain way under certain conditions, even when unnecessary. I guess PTSD would be an example of a cause for a harmful type of this kind of pre-conditioning. I imagine we all have layers of this preconditioning, reaction to ads, politics, and music to name a few.
I think we may move the clock back.