Calendar Books by Allen James - Daily Reading - "The Journey: A Calendar Book"

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Allen James writes for August 15th, from The Journey: A Calendar Book,

"Put mint in your tea" (James, 2012).

Throughout my teen years I recall my mother had planted along the front porch of my childhood home (the porch had been a wrap around wooden plank, white column porch which many of the homes in Dawson Springs, Kentucky possessed which were built in the 1920s but my father had "updated" and turned the curved "wrap around" into a carport and concreted the main porch with black wrought-iron "posts" when I was 9 or 10 - I recall his doing so and my older brothers assisting) planting mint along the entire front.  During the summer months the scent of mint permeated the front "yard".  I emphasize "yard" because all throughout my childhood there was not "yard", just a front area from the porch to the sidewalk some 30 feet away, a dirt playground for my friends and I to play with our Tonka dump trucks and bulldozers and Matchbox cars.  There were two large maples on each side of the walk leading from the porch to the pedestrian walk, which he redid at the same time.  The trees kept grass from growing no matter how many times Daddy-O attempted to grow grass.  Thus he cut down one of the maples and finally succeeded in making our Sahara into a plush oasis.  We would now have roads for our little Matchbox cars and trucks to travel.

I was usually oblivious to Mom coming out from time to time while we little ones were lost in our world of "grown-up" mimicking imaginary world, and snipped of bits of the fresh mint to put in the sun-tea she would brew during those sultry Kentucky summers.  Looking back,  there were many like amenities of which I was not aware my mother would draw from to give her large family's very far from middle class life a bit of variety.

How nice it was when we'd played so long we'd forget how thirsty we were Momma would have waiting for us, her own children and those of the neighborhood who congregated at the Harryman House, those tall Tupperware multicolored plastic "glasses" full of mint and lemon spiked southern iced tea to quell our thirst and cool our panting bodies as we took a break but quickly returned to the construction site or rain-forest to which our childish whims beckoned.

Little did I realize then this small town, untraveled, mother of seven who worked diligently day and night to provide for her family a home which they would recall long after she would be deceased, was exposing us to the reality of the idiom, "Variety is the spice of life". 

We all have heard the phrase, however as we mature into adulthood from those wonder years of childhood, we soon realize we are actually creatures of habit.  Researchers who are experts in human behavior report while we believe we have diverse tastes, we actually prefer the things we know.
The phenomenon explains why our kitchen cupboards are full of tins and packets of food which will never be eaten and why many a bookshelf contains novels which have never been opened, more more than likely, never will.

When we are actually consuming things, we tend to like less variety than we think or imagine we will like. Daniel Read, of Warwick Business School, said: "People tend to choose more variety than they actually want to consume. ‘We believe that variety is a pretty good things. But the variety is that when we are actually consuming things, we tend to like less variety than we think or imagine we will like."

Professor Read has shown we exhibit this diversification bias, or mistaken appetite for variety, in an experiment in which volunteers given the choice of chocolate, fruit and crisps to eat as snacks.

They either stocked up on treats for the coming weeks at the start of the experiment, or chose a snack each week. When choosing all their snacks at once, they opted for more variety. For instance, they might pick two bars of chocolate, two pieces of fruit and a bag of crisps. But, if choosing the snacks one by one, just ahead of eating, they’d go for crisps each time. And given the chance of changing their mind, those who had stocked up on a variety of treats tended to revert to playing it safe.

In other words, we are actually creatures of habit at heart.  As a result, a weekly or fortnightly trip to the supermarket is likely to lead to us making choices we’ll later regret. Professor Read said: "Let’s say you buy half a kilo of cheddar, 100g of brie and another cheese that takes your fancy. Then you put them in the fridge; have a cheddar cheese sandwich and another and another until suddenly there is no cheddar left. There are all these other cheeses in the fridge, but you go back to the supermarket and buy more cheddar cheese and then you will buy some other cheeses which will probably end up in the bin in the future" (dailymail.com).

We may think we are someone who likes reading mystery novels, but also the occasional literary novel - but the high-brow option tends to stay on the shelf.  In another experiment, Professor Read, who features in the latest edition of BBC Radio Four’s Human Zoo series, asked volunteers to rent two DVDs which were to be watched several days apart. Those who choose both films at the same time were more likely to choose two different genres. They also tended to choose an easy-viewing film to watch on the day and more high-brow one for later in the week, suggesting they liked to pretend to themselves they were more intellectual than they really were. The professor added: "We have an image of ourselves which is different from reality we are consuming, for all types of things.

It’s the same with books. We may think we are someone who likes reading mystery novels but also the occasional literary novel. In a three for two offer, we buy two mysteries and one literary novel, read the mysteries and the literary novel sits on the shelf" (dailymail.com).

Professor Read has put his findings into practice. He said: "I am more willing to buy ten of the same thing. That is not a bad lesson to learn - if you like something, choose a little bit more of it than you are tempted to (dailymail.com).

Personal success comes from adding variety to our lives.  Our lives become more dynamic and less static when we learn, experience, attempt, embrace, and infuse variety into them, I believe.  It's very much an application of the fact introducing new and different concepts, ideas, and activities to our brains assists in curbing the effects of early on-set Alzheimer Disease.  As Dave Sheppard, a self proclaimed expert in the field of educational consulting states, "If it doesn't hurt you, if it can help you, why not do it" (Sheppard, 2014).

Put mint in your tea, enjoy not only a great flavor which it provides our taste buds, but the great analogy of adding diversity to our lives, and in essence, pushing us along to....personal success.

Keep looking up.  : ) AJ