On Plants and Habituation

My plant journey

My favourite time of day is the early morning. I look forward to waking up, tiptoeing down to the kitchen, and pouring my first cup of coffee. Mug in hand, I then spend a few minutes with my plants. My collection includes pothos, dieffenbachia, a money tree, a couple of snake plants, a dragon plant, and a bunch of succulents. I check for new growth, wipe dust off the leaves, sometimes prune, and sometimes water. I love watching my plants change in small, barely perceptible ways, and seeing those changes compound over time. It always reminds me of the famous Hemingway quote, “Gradually, then Suddenly,” uttered in response to the question, “How did you go bankrupt?” in The Sun Also Rises.

I wasn’t always a plant person. For a long time, I was plant blind. Plant blindness is the human tendency to ignore plant species. I was totally unaware of the plants in my environment and oblivious to their beauty and ample offerings. I became curious about plants during the Covid lockdowns. When the world came to a screeching halt, I started spending a lot of time in my backyard and noticing the trees, shrubs, and flowers. I was humbled and awed by the realization that they’d been there all along.

Slowly but surely, as my curiosity grew, so did my plant literacy. I read books like Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest and listened to podcasts like Growing Joy. I even completed an online course about plant biology. And then as we began to emerge from Covid and the world opened up again, I found myself irresistibly drawn to natural settings like parks and community gardens. Even without seeking them out, plants were everywhere, from manicured lawns to storefront windows.

My plant journey came to mind as I was reading Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There. The book, written by law professor Cass Sunstein and neuroscientist Tali Sharot, explores the concept of habituation. Habituation is the process through which we become used to a stimulus, such that it no longer elicits a response. Sunstein and Sharot explain that we habituate to everything, all the time, from our personal relationships to societal woes to the climate crisis. As adaptive creatures, we seem to habituate to the good and the bad in equal measure.

Habituating to the bad

The human capacity to habituate to the bad could be construed as an advantage. By habituating to conditions that are less than desirable, we learn to tolerate discomfort and build resilience. It. Is only through enduring hardships that we become stronger and wiser. Perhaps, then, by lowering our expectations, we’d be better off. Say, for example, Peter suffers a stroke and is left with multiple ailments, including physical weakness and impaired speech. The effects of the stroke cannot be undone. Therefore, accepting his newfound limitations, rather than denying or resisting them, will undoubtedly lead to Peter’s increased happiness. Forgoing anger and bitterness, and simply moving forward with one’s life, is surely beneficial.

But habituating to the bad can also be problematic. If Peter is overly accepting of his health issues, he won’t be inclined to improve them through treatments and therapies. An attitude of complacency and an unwillingness to change is the flipside of habituating to the bad, and it can have broad societal repercussions: “That Tuesday’s nightmare is Sunday’s snore becomes a serious challenge for fighting foolishness, cruelty, suffering, waste, corruption, discrimination, misinformation, and tyranny” (I.3). The more we’re used to a certain state of affairs, the less inclined we are to question it or to attempt to break free.

Habituating to the good

Habituating to the good, similarly, is a double-edged sword. On the upside, it “drives you to move forward and progress. If you did not experience habituation, you would be satisfied with less.” (1.15) Only once we’re sufficiently habituated do we persevere and strive, often resulting in great milestones and important achievements. For example, Novak Djokovic was having a phenomenal season in 2015; he’d reached all four Grand Slam finals and won three of them. But he wasn’t satisfied. Having habituated to his success, he decided to change up his game by transforming his serve and becoming much more aggressive on the court. Since then, he’s amassed more Grand Slam titles than any other men’s singles player and smashed countless records.

On the other hand, habituating to the good may lead us to feel “unsatisfied, bored, restless, and greedy” (1.19). To illustrate this phenomenon, the authors point to the midlife crisis. They argue that happiness often decreases around midlife because that’s when people find themselves stuck. Helen, for example, is healthy, financially stable, and has a loving family. However, she’s had time to steadily habituate to this reality, and is no longer fulfilled. Instead, she is bored and restless. Another aspect of midlife is “less change, less learning, less that is unknown or unpredictable” (1.24). Lack of change, which can feel like mind-numbing monotony, is a key contributor to the malaise that characterizes the midlife crisis.

Dishabituating to the status quo

Sunstein and Sharot propose that one way to combat the perils of habituation is through dishabituation. Dishabituation is induced by change, and change is what allows us to live rich and varied lives. Experiences that are dishabituating force us to pause and reassess the status quo, and to proceed differently. What if Peter, the stroke victim, found out that he was going to be a grandfather? His excitement might trigger dishabituation and prompt him to undergo rehabilitation, in the hopes that he will one day play with his grandchild. And what if Helen received a promotion and had the opportunity to relocate to Europe? This could also act as an agent of dishabituation, disrupting the mundanity of her everyday life.

In terms of my journey from plant blind to plant enthusiast, the pandemic was the dishabituating factor. It caused such a rift in my normal routine that I could suddenly observe my environment with fresh eyes and temporarily cast aside my preconceptions. In the stillness of that moment in history, I awoke to what had been there all along and never looked back.