Treats

"You promised!" He yelled in his most whiny and angered tone, slamming down the phone and breaking contact with his mother. It was a petty outburst, an eruption of emotions based on his desire to eat dinner in a restaurant instead of home. His anger bubbled up from his sense of righteousness, he had been promised a night on the town, promised! True? Humans remember events and words that work in their favor, and everyone has a differently colored memory of the same conversation; but despite this, he acted badly towards his mother.
When she came home later that night, she was all smiles as they planned where to eat the following evening. Not a word was mentioned about his outburst, both of them had forgotten, and he was allowed to invite a friend to bring to the restaurant.
And with this cycle of events, his machine has learned a valuable lesson, one that will leave a lasting imprint. One that he will use and recreate for the rest of his natural life, and most likely, he will carry it along to the next. Outbursts will be rewarded. Harsh words and deeds will be cast out like rice at a wedding, falling on all those in his path. He has learned that he can do whatever he wants without consequences...he may lash out and still get what he wants. This is his habit, and with each passing circumstance of anger à outburst à desire…this habit will become more entrenched, etching itself further and further into this molecular memory.
His machine rules him, and each day, it holds him tighter within the claws of habit. All of us are embedded within our machines, but we can learn to be the master, not the slave. The first step is realizing when you have acted badly…what was your desire? Examine what you wanted and if you got it. If you lashed out or got sad or manifested any negative emotion to achieve your desire, then you helped your machine gain more strength. If you were able to push through an interval, pushing yourself and your machine past the boundary of what is normally comfortable, then your machine deserves a small reward, a cookie or twenty minutes of television. If you acted like a jerk to your friend because you needed sugar because you had a headache and then you ate a cookie, your machine was given a treat for the wrong reasons.