We often think of habits as behaviors. James Clear has made a career preaching what he calls “atomic habits”—those small changes that strike one as meaningless in an acute timeframe, but over an expanded time horizon, grow exponentially, ultimately constituting a new reality. His writing is compelling and sensical. I recommend his book, and he has sold millions of copies, mostly for people wanting to make a practical change in their lives. But embedded in his work is a radical claim about reality itself. It heralds, in fascinating ways, the move from a “world of objects” into a world of behaviors or patterns of behaviors. This departure from the former is nothing less than an abandonment of the immanent frame, or “the iron box of secularism” which rests upon unnamed assumptions of a strictly materialist world.
Those of you familiar with the work of Jordan Peterson may note that this is how he opens up his first work Maps of Meaning, a dense but insightful book. A world of things is not the same thing as a world of behaviors. Nouns are not verbs, no matter how much we try to make them so. “Grammar Nazis”, those pedant-guardians who descry rule breaking in language, wail and gnash their teeth over this process dubbed “verbing.” But count me amongst the “verbers” because moving from nouns to verbs illuminates something true about the reality we “live and move and have our being” in. None other than Shakespeare himself is a radical verber. He did it with “ghost” and “dog” and many others.
But I’d like to point out that this is no mere one-way progression of nouns into verbs. We also know that nouns can become verbs. Thus my attention to the word “habit.” We typically think of the word habit as primarily a kind of chronic behavior which can be positive or negative: exercise, say, or smoking. We might say “Sally has a habit of morning coffee,” or “Jim has a habit of forgetting his thermos at the office.” The sense of habit as a verb is a late development. Wikipedia tells us: “[t]he word habit derives from the Latin words habere, which means ‘have, consist of,’ and habitus, which means ‘condition, or state of being.’”1 The later meaning is noted as a progression.
This older sense of the word “habit” we see with serious religious practitioners. A member of a religious order takes on a specific dress or outfit that is a physical sign and marker of an adopted “order” of life. Thus, when a young woman joins a “religious order”—such as a Benedictine convent, she joins a group of women following the Rule of St. Benedict. She enters into a specific way of life ordered towards a specific end—ora et labora. It is both a style of life and a way of life. Typically, after an initial period of trial in which the person lives out the “way” on a trial basis as a postulant, she enters officially, leaving behind her “civies” and takes on “the habit”. To riff on the above “verbing” we might say that this young woman has gone from “verbing” to “nouning.” She has become that which she is acting out. The specific garment signals to the world and to her fellow sisters that she is now “on the team.” She now wears the costume. No one can now mistake her for what she has become.2
On a side note, this notion leads to yet another element: team jerseys, or as the Brits call it, “kit.” Why do we wear uniforms? There are practical reasons, as anyone who has ever played a game of pickup basketball and the whole “shirts and skins” mess. Wearing pinnies with clear color contrast is rather helpful in the mad rush of an intense game of lacrosse or soccer. Color signifies friend or foe. Many teams have ceremonies for “earning your jersey” and some coaches make a big deal about the “honor” of wearing a particular uniform, or even specific numbers of a uniform that have a legacy of hard work, determination, leadership, etc.3
The pride somehow inheres or is manifest IN the uniform. So much for the triumph of what Charles Taylor dubbed the “the buffered self.”
We are talking here of spirits. We are talking here of something not just behind the sign, or through the sign, but also IN the sign. The young nun “professes” her vows, takes on the habit, and lives out a specific form of life. The habit she dons IS the way of life; it IS the sign and signifier. A Catholic would call this a “sacramental”—an outer sign of an inner reality.
There is (somehow) honor and dignity inherent in the brown or black or gray habit, especially as the individual sister forsakes her old identity, ditches her regular clothing, and takes on a habit, and oftentimes even a new name. This new identity, in time, supersedes or superannuates the old identity, as any old monk or nun will tell you. The rule of life, the adopted order, the new clothing, and the new name all come together to grant a new life—a radical life in Christ.
So what?
The radical implicit claim in Clear’s view of habits is this: “your habits contribute most of the evidence that shapes your identity. In this way, the process of building habits is actually the process of becoming yourself.”4 And we become ourselves by acting out into the world.
How we act and how we “sign” matters, quite physically. We are what we project into the world and how we are taken to be by others in the world by others who are also acting and projecting and “signing” physically, too. Think seriously about this truth the next time you walk out the house in your “groutfit.”
Fashion is not ephemeral or frivolous. How we dress builds out a reality. Clothing—habits—make the man.
To be clear: we make ourselves real only through what we do, and not only by what we do, but by how we do it. I become myself only through my habits (verb and noun).
In this way, our habits are liturgical, and call us into communion.
We noun by verbing. We verb in order to noun.
Perhaps even more interesting, during many consecrations, the novice enters in a wedding gown, then takes on the habit as a sign of having married to Christ.
Clear, Atomic Habits, p37
Clothes, and one’s comportment, really do send a message. This has been completely lost in our culture - everything has been relentlessly casual-ized, hence t-shirts and flip-flops at the office and pajama pants at the grocery store.
While I was visiting my family over Christmas, I was watching the local news. One of my hometown’s city officials was being interviewed, and he was dressed in jeans and a crumpled polo shirt. That signified not even a lack of self-esteem or dignity, but also a lack of respect for his position. How difficult would it have been to put on a sport coat and a nice button down shirt, or even to comb his hair or put on a professional comportment?
Great article, but I have to ask, where'd you get that great picture of the nun's habits?