The Tourist and the Traveller

Harnessing the connective power of habits and customs.

Many leadership cultures highlight the value of habits. If it is engrained in military training from the start, the habits of successful leaders are post rationalised in hope of deriving a recipe for their success.

Indeed, habits have many merits, including nurturing a sense of (self-)care and dignity as what we value is presented to the world.

Habits create context and consistency, in ways that can become ritualistic when charged with a lot of symbolic value. In that sense, habits reflect aspects of our value system and are almost a representation of a cosmogony in response to an otherwise messy world.

Conversely, habits are sometimes put on trial as an act of resistance to the flow of a dynamic world. Suddenly, they become mania or neurotic behaviours: a condition for engaging with the world and a constraint to praxis.

“Is there such thing as ‘good habits’ then?”, asked the Mouse.  

Trivially, habits are dubbed ‘good ones’ when they fit with our worldview and experience. In other words, they have perceived value but not inherent value, and thus may be more telling about our blind spots than about our beliefs.

However, considering that habits are a fixed point, they can serve as a yardstick to measure the discrepancy between us and our environment. As such, they can be a formidable source of information on feelings, needs, or challenges, provided one can cope with a certain amount of discomfort.  

Similarly, and paradoxically enough, provided we don’t demand that others have the same, habits can help us connect with other people. We can either adopt someone else’s habit and intently honour that person when performing it. Or, we can look kindly at routines, for they reflect someone else’s vulnerability and echo our own fragility. In that sense, rituals (in religious and secular settings) aim to create connection through shared habits.

However, conscious leaders can also transcend rituals by considering customs as an invitation to share a moment with someone without assigning it meaning beforehand. Letting go of control roots the potential connection in innocence. From it can emerge an ephemeral and serendipitous creation that has the potential to change the way one looks at certain things, pleasantly or not.  

It is the difference between tourists and travellers. Whereas the former will consider others’ customs as an oddity, and mimic them in ways that fit their worldview, the latter understand that to acquire truth about oneself through otherness, it is not sufficient to wander around: you need to come as you are. To travellers, others’ customs are no longer a barrier but an invitation. And theirs, an offer to experience something transformative and genuine.

Baptiste Raymond - 07/2022.