Dimon Kendrick-Holmes: 2016 brings surprise and shock

Last year, I went to the gym. It was 10 days ago, but it was still 2015.

The place was packed. I actually had to wait 30 minutes to use one of four elliptical machines. That's never happened to me before.

Maybe it's never happened to me because I don't go to the gym much, or maybe it's because the people who were using the machines don't go to the gym much.

At any rate, the gym was packed.

A few days ago, I returned to the gym. It was now 2016.

I had my pick of ellipticals, as well as my pick of treadmills, weight benches, swimming lanes and racquetball courts. That's because the place was empty.

In one week, everything had changed. Last week, with another year approaching, everybody was going to take control of his or her life. We were all going to make a change for the better.

Maybe this happens every year, but this year it seems to have happened faster than ever.

I have no idea why, but I'll attempt an explanation as to how.

Over the holidays, while drinking a glass of fortified eggnog at my brother's house, I picked up a book called "Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard."

In it, the authors, brothers Chip and Dan Heath, refer extensively to the elephant and rider analogy originated by a University of Virginia psychologist named Jonathan Haidt.

Each human being has an emotional side and a rational side, the Heath brothers write. The emotional side is instinctive and reactive, feeling pain and pleasure. The rational side is conscious and reflective, analyzing situations and making plans for the future.

The emotional side, the analogy goes, is like an elephant, large and powerful, while the rational side is like a rider perched atop the elephant, holding the reins and appearing to be in charge.

"Anytime the six-ton Elephant and the Rider disagree about which direction to go," the Heath brothers write, "the Rider is going to lose. He's completely overmatched."

In our community, this has been an emotional week. I'm thinking specifically of conversations I've heard since news broke of the triple homicide in Upatoi.

People have been talking about getting alarm systems and purchasing firearms. That's because they feel fear. That's because

they don't know how the killings happened, which means they don't know whether the killings were random.

Which means they don't know whether such a thing might happen to them.

I'm not suggesting that people stopped going to the gym this week because of this tragic news. Every year, people resolve to make a simple improvement and then that big old elephant decides to hit the snooze button.

It's just a coincidence that at the exact time when many of us resolve to live more deliberately and take charge of our lives, something happens that shocks, saddens and confuses us.

Who didn't want to start 2016 moving forward? But right now, we're standing still.

Dimon Kendrick-Holmes, executive editor, dkholmes@ledger-enquirer.com

This story was originally published January 8, 2016 at 8:17 PM with the headline "Dimon Kendrick-Holmes: 2016 brings surprise and shock ."