In the Book of Exodus, there is a well-known moment.
The people of Israel have only just been freed from Egypt. Freed through miracles and wonders, brought out of generations of slavery into a freedom they have never known.
But Egypt is still within them. Its ways. Its fears. Its habits of mind.
They have not had time to truly feel, live and be free.
And now they stand at the foot of a mountain, in the middle of the desert. No map. No certainty. Only heat, and sand, and the unknown stretching in every direction.
Everything they have depends on one man, Moses, their single link to the divine and to the way forward.
He climbs the mountain, and tells them to wait.
But he is gone far longer than expected.
Days pass. Then more.
And in their experience, their one source of certainty is simply… gone.
Some of the people begin to panic.
And in that panic, they do something that, on the surface, makes no sense at all.
They gather their gold, and they build a calf. An idol to worship. Exactly the kind of thing they had known in Egypt.
In their fear, they reach back for the familiar, even though the familiar was the very thing they had just been freed from.
The Pull of the Familiar
I think about that story sometimes.
The pull to reach back for something familiar, precisely when everything feels uncertain.
I recognize it.
Not because I’ve studied it.
Because I’ve lived it.
There are things I’ve worked hard to move beyond. Old patterns. Old comforts. Ways of coping that once kept me safe, and later only kept me stuck.
And there were moments I truly believed I’d left them behind.
But I’ve learned something humbling.
Old ways of coping sometimes lean on bleeding wounds, raw emotions, deeply rooted patterns.
Whenever my healing was still ongoing, my default reaction to a difficult situation, or a difficult emotion, was the old way of coping.
The very same one I was certain I had left behind.
How Strong the Pull Can Be
It reminds me of something I’ve seen in the world of addiction.
Take smoking.
Someone can decide, with complete sincerity, that they’re done.
They can go days, weeks, even months without a cigarette.
And then a hard day comes. A real one.
Stress. Conflict. Something that floods them.
And in that moment, every part of them, the mind, the body, the nerves, seems to cry out in one voice.
There is only one thing that will help.
Just one.
The old, familiar rescue.
That’s how strong the pull of the familiar can be.
It’s a moment of clashing.
The clash between old habits and new ones.
Between the way I’ve always coped, and the way I’m still learning to.
Compassion, and Responsibility
So what do I take from all of this?
First, compassion.
When I catch myself reaching for an old pattern in a moment of fear, I try not to meet it with judgment.
The healing wasn’t finished. The wound was still open. The pull was strong.
That deserves understanding, not blame.
But compassion is only half of it.
Because here is the part I don’t want to forget.
The panic is real. The pull is real. The old groove is real.
And still, the calf is something I build.
No one hands it to me. No one forces my hand.
In the hour of testing, there is still a choice, even when it doesn’t feel like one.
That’s not a heavy truth. It’s a freeing one.
Because if the old pattern were simply my fate, there would be nothing to do but surrender to it.
But it isn’t my fate.
It’s a road I know well, and can, in time, choose not to take.
Old habits die hard?
Sometimes.
My experience has shown me otherwise, too.
And if they do die hard, I try my best to remember that they die, eventually.
It’s always my responsibility, and my choice, to bring them full circle.
With compassion. Curiosity. An open heart, and agency.
