The Rider and the Elephant

I've been reading an interesting book lately, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. In the book, the author likens a person's willpower to a rider of an elephant, the elephant being a person's emotions and instincts, the rider being a person's rational mind. There have been many terms for these parts of the psychic apparatus. Freud called them the id and the ego.


What is interesting to note is that there have been studies that show that willpower is a finite resource. Like a muscle, it can be exhausted, giving free reign to the elephant. The main premise of the book is that the best way to change a behavior is to get the elephant and the rider going in the same direction, otherwise the rider will become exhausted and the elephant will return to its prior behavior. Sound familiar? Yo-yo dieting anyone?


So, how do you change the direction of the elephant? You can't appeal to it rationally. That's the rider, remember? You have to appeal to a person emotionally. In The 4-Hour Body, Tim Ferriss refers to this as a Harajuku Moment, or what Malcom Gladwell referred to as a Tipping Point. It is the point when a person emotionally buys into the idea the rider is presenting.


I had my Harajuku Moment last December. I broke a tooth while eating breakfast, chewing a piece of bacon. It was at that point that I realized that if I didn't take better care of myself then things would keep breaking, things much more serious than a tooth. A silly little moment, but it caused me to reevaluate my whole lifestyle, and brought me to the conclusion that I have to start taking better care of myself. Rationally, I always knew I should, but it took this to get the elephant to agree.


Was this a true moment or did I manufacture it? Really, does it matter? It got me to change my behavior. If you want to change something, find an emotional reason to do it. Save the planet, see a grandchild graduate high school, complete a marathon, avoid a dentist. Find an emotional response and tie your willpower to it. That is an unbeatable combination.

Random Question

How do you throw away a trash can?

The Blue Van

I walk my dog in the cemetery on Washington Avenue. Actually, we go back through the bike path and past the water treatment plant, but we park in the cemetery and start from there. It's a nice place for a walk, and there are often others about, either in the cemetery or along the bike path.

One cold and rainy day (Keller, my dog, can often convince me to take him even on the worst days. His powers of persuasion are impressive) I decided to take a different route, not along the bike path, but swinging around to a newer section of the cemetery. This route is shorter, and I would never be more than a sprint away from where I'd parked the car, in case the sky decided to make good on its promise of a downpour.

I was walking with my head down, chin tucked against the wind, leaden clouds scuttling low overhead, when I noticed a blue van parked alongside the access road in front of me. I was a bit surprised. The cemetery was deserted that day and this was the first car I'd seen. The van was empty. I lifted my head and glanced about for the driver, casting my gaze up and down the rows of markers. I found him sitting in front of a tombstone about twenty yards away. He was wearing a blue windbreaker, the wind lifting a lock of his gray hair. His back was to me. I never saw his face.

Have you ever arrived at church after the service has started and had to sneak into the back? That's the way I felt with this man in this cemetery. I turned off my mp3 player and tiptoed past, keeping to the far side of the road, careful not even to jiggle the tags on my dog's collar. He could not have heard me, but that didn't matter. Something about this scene demanded my deference. I soon as I was past I glanced back to see if I had disturbed him. He hadn't moved.

In the days that followed I passed by the cemetery often. Every time, I looked for the blue van. Three or four times I spotted it there, although I have not seen it in recent months.

I think of the old man every now and then, sitting in front of that tombstone. I imagine he comes to talk to his wife, to tell her news of the children, although he doesn't hear much. They are, after all, busy spinning lives of their own. I imagine he tells her of her flowerbeds. He's still watering them. They need weeded but he's afraid to do so, fearing he will pull the flowers with the weeds. He tells her what he has read in the newspaper, who has died and who is ill, who has married and who has divorced. He tells her he needs to eat better but has little desire to do so. He tells her he's no longer angry that she left him, that the pain he felt at her passing has faded, leaving in its place only an emptiness he cannot fill.

He rises then and folds his chair, wincing at the pain that has crept into his knees. He places a hand upon the cold stone and tells her to wait for him, to be patient, he will be along shortly. A minute later the van roars to life and the cemetery is empty, motionless save for leaves blowing against the ground.

Yellow Bandaids

When I was little, I spent a lot of my time at my grandma's house. I remember everything was old and lacey, with lots of strange items and artifacts. There was a shelf full of seashells and strange exotic rocks. On the desk was a little bottle of water with a sponge at the end used to lick stamps. My grandmother was diabetic, and whenever I was around she would let me drop one of the saccharin tablets she used to sweeten her tea into her cup. We would sit together in her sunlit kitchen and watch them dissolve. Upon her nightstand she kept the biggest bottle of Rolaids I'd ever seen. I thought they were candy, and sneaked one every time I was there. She's been gone close to twenty years now, but every now and then something will spark a memory of her; some taste, smell or sound will transport me back to her and I will be with her again, if only for a moment. It happened the other day, strangely enough with a band aid.

As a child, I was constantly getting scrapes and bruises. This is true of any child, and like any mother mine kept a constant supply of antibiotic and bandages, tinctures and ointments. I remember sitting on the toilet as she reached into the medicine chest and pulled out the little bottle of Mercurochrome, its white label marked with a small red cross. I would squirm as she painted on the red stuff, it's bite stinging more than the wound. I suspected it was some kind of backhand punishment for getting injured. But then she would let me open the band aid, and all was forgiven. It was crisp and fresh and had a little red string you pulled to release it, a band aid ripcord. I loved opening them. Then I would be back outside, warnings of not to do whatever it was I had been doing ringing in my ears.

I'm not nearly as injury prone these days, but I have recently started exercising again and have cultivated a few calluses from the rowing machine. So foreign are these fruits of physical labor that I can't leave them alone. I absently pick at them until they are red and raw. I decided to cover them and went into the bathroom to get a band aid. I opened the box on the sink and was suddenly back in my grandmother's house again. Whereas my mother's band aids were always shiny and new, my grandmother's band aids were yellow with age, the wrappers falling off of them like ancient Egyptian mummy wrappings. Here in my own bathroom I was holding one of these artifacts, a band aid yellowed with age, the wrapper falling away like an autumn leaf. Only these weren't my grandmother's band aids. I remember buying them at Kroger.

The days slip away, and we don't always have proof of the passage of time, but here in my hand was a reminder. I've lived long enough to have yellow band aids like my grandmother. I suppose that's a victory of sorts.