Muscle Memory
One day somebody just decided that there was no longer any reason to put two spaces after a period. And whoever it was didn’t tell anybody. It feels like a secret initiative designed to age shame. I remember when it hit me, and I just couldn’t believe it was a thing. My daughter told me I had too many spaces after my periods, and I of course, responded, “No I don’t.” I was a typing champion. There are things I know some things about.
But it bugged me because she seemed so sure. So that night when she left, I looked it up. And I almost passed out. I sat dumbfounded for a bit just staring at the wall. It felt a little like I’d been walking around with my pants down. I had practiced “Now-is-the-time-for-all-good-men-to-come-to-the-aid-of-their-country--period, space, space” so many times while in high school, the reflex became like my basketball follow through with the pinky pointed out. It just happened. The muscle memory is carved into my bones.
I had practiced “Now-is-the-time-for-all-good-men-to-come-to-the-aid-of-their-country--period, space, space” so many times while in high school, the reflex became like my basketball follow through with the pinky pointed out. It just happened. The muscle memory is carved into my bones.
Muscle memory is a crazy incredible God gift that enables us to create maximum memory and motor efficiency by reducing conscious effort. (And, yes, I just had to edit the extra space after the end of that last sentence.) It’s the less-is-more solution that keeps us from having to think. And that is, simultaneously, both a good and a very bad thing.
Not thinking (even though it sounds counterintuitive) can not only be good, it can often be necessary. Ask any golfer standing over the ball on the tee box with a driver in his hand. For most performances---whether they be physical in nature or not—the silencing of the “thinker bee” is the key to getting in the zone. You give your brain something very simple to make itself interested in and the entire rest of your being does what it already knows how to do. Dancers, athletes, artists, actors—they all revel in “not thinking”. It helps them slide majestically out of their own way.
But not all muscle memory patterns deserve such lack of supervision. Case in point, when I run my right foot turns in and my arms move like grosgrain across my body. Any experienced runner will tell you this is a recipe for disaster if you plan on running very often or very far. So not thinking isn’t an option for me if I’m running regularly or for a distance of several miles. I’m better off paying attention lest I wind up on ice or in traction. The thinking keeps me safe when my muscles are good at the wrong things.
We do lots of things without thinking. I squish my face up as if I’m in pain sometimes when nothing really hurts. My granny used to do it and it always made me laugh. It would be when she was trying to zip her dress or wash her face or if someone was about to run a brush through her hair. It was like a preparatory reflex for discomfort. I would ask her if she was hurting because she looked like she was in pain. And she’d look at me like I was crazy. Then we’d both start to giggle. A few years back I noticed myself in the shower, wincing while I washed my hair. I caught myself and thought, “Oh My Gosh! I’m Granny! What exactly am I bracing for?” I could almost feel the wrinkles making indentions across my distorted face. I don’t know if my “ouch reflex” came via DNA or if it was an assimilation built upon proximity across the years, but I do know that it’s hardwired now and would take some time and concentrated effort if I wanted it to change.
A lot of our default ‘go-tos’ are trivial, like my face squishing. The way we hold the steering wheel, or answer the phone, or brush our teeth are things we do in certain ways without ever giving a second thought to how we do them. And, typically, they pose no hazard. No one ever even notices, and if they did, they wouldn’t care.
But some of the things we do without thinking would, no doubt, benefit from a thought provoked re-wire. Like the way we respond when we’re challenged. Or what we do when we’re nervous. Or the story we tell ourselves every time we fail. Those are patterns, too. Patterns as deeply ingrained in ruts as the two spaces I type following the period at the end of a sentence, or my carriage when I run.
But ruts are hard to crawl out of. Change is annoying and uncomfortable, and it always slows us down.
It's scary sometimes to stop and recognize how much we do on autopilot. Yet, if we thought about it all, we’d never get anything done. The balance of thinking/not thinking is precarious. It hinges on all kinds of things ranging from personal cost-benefit analysis to rule adjustments that happen well beyond the realm of our control.
There’s an old cliché about the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master. I think that means, in part, that it’s our job to keep it in check. We are responsible for editing our patterns. We are responsible for determining what is working and what periodically needs amending. And we are responsible for changing--even when nobody tells us the world has adjusted the rules. (Though a heads-up would be nice! ☺)
Sherri Coale
P.S. As relevant today as it was in 1989 when it was first published...some things never change.
