Wednesday 14 February 2018

Contagious Life

Aiya!

*coughs awkwardly* Well, first off, I apologise for my absence. I could go into great detail explaining, but to make it short, Year 11 (junior year to Americans) happened, and I have spent the past few weeks adjusting and trying to rearrange my schedule. As it is, I shall be updating my blog on Wednesdays now, as my Bible Study group has moved to Thursdays. Writing is still happening a lot, although, I have to swap writing styles depending on whether it is just my normal writing, or the writing for school.


Apparently, my writing has, “Too many short paragraphs and fragmented sentences.” At first I just shrugged it off and swapped my writing style, but then, as I kept struggling to write in this weird, flowery, long-paragraphed, descriptive way, I started wondering where on earth I had learnt my writing style from.

I turned to my bookshelves and flicked through different books, then on my Kindle, then I moved to looking onto the other bookshelves in the house, then I looked at the different draft that I was critiquing for people.

But I could not find this weird writing style anywhere. (Please note, I was also at home sick and prooooobably not thinking too straight as normally I would have worked this out much faster than this. Plus, I have noticed this many times before. :P) Eventually, my awesome cousin Jane, (who had no idea of what I was doing) sent me a snippet of an idea she’s been working on. After a few minutes of reading through it, I remembered where else I had seen my writing style.

In my cousin.

It explained a lot.

But seriously, how often do we unintentionally start copying people? As the youngest of three in my family, I can certainly look back and say that I copied my siblings. And it was totally unplanned. I’ve grown up with my sense of humour being dry wit, because that is what my brother was like. I also went through a phase where I would use the word, ‘devastating’ (I was about seven) purely because that was a word that my sister used all of the time. I started to write film music style music because my brother did. (Seriously though, I couldn’t just write a normal composition, no matter what I did it sounded like I was trying to imitate John Williams… and most of the time failing epically.)

And, even in other people’s lives I see how I am affected, or how they are. My cousin Jane had a pastor who would always say, ‘indeed.’ It made her say it more often than normal and, well… *tilts head, thinking* I don’t think I actually just say, ‘yes’ anymore.

Only last weekend, I went to my cousin’s place. I was quite startled to realise that my nine year old cousin had developed a serious case of sarcasm. I mean, in a teenager it would be perfectly normal and not seem crazy, but in a nine year old? Well, it had me really confused. I asked one of his older sisters and she told me that he’d been getting it from one of their friends… Along with a lot of his random phrases and word choices. Not only that, but she informed me that he has also been saying, ‘that’s new’ a lot. And that that definitely came from me.

Even siblings are known for using similar hand gestures, and walking in similar ways… Even the ones who don’t get on brilliantly.

Why do we always seem to mimic each other in some way? I actually sent out an email to a few friends asking some questions about random habit of people and if they mimic them, and I got a fair few in reply…


  • Ducking when walking through conversations/in front of class
  • Looking at wrist when trying to think
  • Saying, ‘indeed’ all of the time
  • Saying ‘cool’ when you don’t say indeed
  • Startling when someone speaks
  • Shaking of hands when getting excited
  • Making gestures with hands at around shoulder height


I also asked if they found themselves mimicking these things and here are some of those answers…


  • Generally picking up the traits of people they spend time around
  • Mimicking other people’s voices
  • Acting like people when referring to them. (Posture, voice, hand actions)
  • Often keywords or phrases
  • Sarcastic remarks



So, people mimic each other. How weird is that? To be honest, it really makes me frantically check everything I do around people. I don’t want to risk having people pick up a bad habit from me, particularly not younger people.

Humans are immensely complex beings. We are individual, but all share a longing for connection and community. Not only that, but we look up to people as well and set them as role models. Most of the time we probably aren’t even aware of it. But we do admire different traits of people and try to copy them. Sometimes we just pick up on random habits from people we are around.

But whether these are intentional or not, they do shape you and change you. They make you who you are. Crazy, right?

Well, this brings me to the prompt.


Any thoughts? Do you have weird habits? Do you mimic other people? Do feel free to chat!






6 comments:

  1. Ahh yes, it's so interesting how people do this. I know I do it plenty of times. :P

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    1. Indeed it is. And I'm sure we all do it. *nodnod*

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  2. Cool prompt! ^-^
    Yee, I sorta have a "weird" habit of wringing my hands a lot when talking to people... No idea why though :P ..And if I do mimick someone's habit, I usually don't even realize I'm doing it until someone else points it out. xD

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    1. Thanks!
      Hmmm... Interesting. I assume most habits are quite random, maybe they once had a reason. *shrugs*
      Hahah, yes, one doesn't tend to assume that they are copying someone.
      Thanks for commenting!

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  3. Wow, this is really interesting! XD I don't really know if I have weird habits (besides talking to myself as if someone else was really in the room :-P); but I do know that if I start saying a certain word all of my younger siblings will say it too. XD Thanks for the inspiration!!!

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    1. Yaay, glad you thought so! Yes, I knows that habit very well. Sometimes you just need to talk to someone like-minded. :P
      Yeees, us younger siblings are known for learning words from the older people. Tis sometimes handy, and other times... Notsomuch.

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