Because the subject of my writing is human nature, I’m always looking for patterns in the way that we think and act.

One thing that I notice, again and again, is that many dangers don’t seem dangerous.

Drinking sugary beverages, not wearing a helmet when riding a motorcycle, texting while walking (or even worse, while driving), setting your headphones to a high volume, skipping your blood-pressure medication, not bothering with sunscreen…when habits or activities are part of our ordinary lives, they feel safe.

 I came across a striking example of this phenomenon in the book Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA (Amazon, Bookshop) by former officer Amaryllis Fox.

She’s describing her experiences of working undercover for the CIA, and she comments about their approach to riding in cars:

It used to be standard operating procedure not to wear seat belts in hostile environments, just in case an officer needed to bail during an ambush. Then the statisticians pointed out that we were losing more operatives to car accidents than terrorist attacks, and we went back to “Click It or Ticket.”

I thought this was such a memorable example of the fact that it can be easy to dismiss a danger simply because it has become so familiar.

Sometimes very simple and ordinary actions can go a long way to making our lives happier and healthier—or not.