Category: Reflections

When we want to sleep, but put it off, it carries a feeling of frustration. There can be many reasons for this. We might convince ourselves to stay up late and finish things for work, or to prepare for an important event, or even finish up an assignment or project for a class.

Sometimes when this happens, it’s when we need sleep the most. It’s as if these things are conspiring against us, keeping us from having a good night’s rest.

Couldn’t they wait until tomorrow? Couldn’t we tell ourselves that? Even though we might, we don’t take our own advice. Instead, we stay up for hours working on whatever needs to be done until it’s finished. By that point, it’s 1 or 2 in the morning. If we’re lucky, we’ll get 5 or 6 hours of sleep. Not enough to be fully rested for work the next day.

Perhaps the best thing to do is to hold off on what needs to be done. Get it done tomorrow so that we can get some rest. Or we can wake up early to work on it (although this is easier said than done). Or we should start getting on a regular sleep schedule, and make everything else work around that.

Years ago, I felt the need for silence–the need for calmness and tranquility from all the noise on TV and from the media. So I started to read, made it a goal to read for just one hour a day. The more I read, the more the noise started to die down. And in my solitude of reading, my mind was transported elsewhere–living in the imaginary world of the books I read.

That silence became a kind of meditation–a way of centering my focus, of training my mind to be still and to concentrate on one thing for a long period of time.

While the noise was gone, my mind was active. I hardly tuned in to the media or to what was on TV. I realized how much less anxious felt with them gone, how much clearer my thoughts were, how much better I was able to think.

Reading requires silence because our imagination is working harder than actively seeing or listening. Reading is a different medium from music or film, one that requires us not just to perceive through our senses, but to imagine what images and sounds might exist.

When we explore a new place, we wander–not knowing where we will end up. Like going to a fair, an amusement park, or an art museum. We wander to see what’s around the bend, to know what’s out there.

Wandering is a slow process. The point isn’t to get to any place quickly, but to know what the place is about. We need time for it to sink in, and to discover each part of it.

Wandering can also help us to think and reflect. It’s an opportunity to sort through our thoughts when sitting or standing still isn’t working. The goal isn’t a destination, but to move as if we were moving through the landscape of our mind–piecing together the fragments and links–finding the treasures that are the key to our questions.

Having an external hard drive for a computer is an invaluable resource. Not only does it back up the data that is on it, but it is a means of transferring data from one device to another. But if we’re not monitoring the storage space on an external hard drive, it can run out quickly, and we wouldn’t know until there was hardly any space left.

Even though my last external hard drive had more than enough space on it the day I bought it, after a few years, I found myself spending hours tidying up the files, deleting things to make more room on it.

Ironically, hard drive space on a computer seems limitless because we don’t see the files taking up any physical space. It’s not like a bookshelf that gets filled up with no space left to fit anymore books or movies. On a computer, we have to check the storage space to see how much space is left. If we don’t check it, it will seem as if we can fill up the storage space as much as we want.

A few months ago, I bought an external hard drive that was considerably larger than the last one I had. Time will tell if the space on it is sufficient–if I will need to buy an even larger one in the future.

I’ve gotten so used to wearing a wristwatch that when I’ve forgotten to wear one when I’m out and about, it feels like I’m missing a valuable tool. Even though my cellphone can tell time, not to mention the digital clock on my car’s dashboard, it’s not the same.

A cellphone has to be held and powered on to see the time on it. If the power runs out, then I’m without a phone–and a clock. The clock in the car is only useful when I’m in the car, not when I’m outside of it.

But when I wear a wristwatch, I can see the time whenever I want. Its battery life isn’t nearly as short as a cellphone. And I don’t need to be in one place (i.e., a car) to know what time it is. It’s as if time follows me wherever I go, and I don’t need to charge it everyday, as I do with my cellphone.

Its function is simple, yet powerful. A wristwatch doesn’t have to be luxurious or the most expensive to do what it does. All it needs to be is reliable, and to work like clockwork.

Right when we hear the alarm go off in the morning, we want to hit the snooze button and get more sleep. But we know we shouldn’t. We know we should wake up and hit the off button instead.

If we hit the snooze button, the alarm will go off again anyway. That few minutes of extra sleep is never enough. An hour or two more would be sufficient.

One way to wake up early–even before the alarm goes off–is to sleep early the night before and get plenty of sleep. If we feel like we need more sleep, it’s an uphill battle to wake up in the morning.

We’ll hit that snooze button until we’ve got barely enough time to get ready and go to work. And in that moment of panic, do we jump out of bed like we’re fully awake.

At the end of an arduous journey or project, we look forward to a reward. Something that acknowledges the effort and challenges we overcame to reach the end of the road.

But often times, the reward is short lived. Whether it’s a prize, or the satisfaction of seeing a finished work, the feeling of gratification and of a job-well-done will soon fade. Sooner or later, we want to start something new, and face new challenges that will push us to our limits. We need it despite the difficulties we went through–even when we said we wouldn’t do it again.

A reward will feel great in the moment, but one reward is hardly ever enough. Even after a break, we feel compelled to start something new, try something different. And in the end, it’s not really about the reward, but about the process of ever-changing growth and discovery that we take on new goals.

Time is something that our life revolves around. The clocks that we used to glance at on our wristwatch have been replaced by the clocks on our cellphones and computers. And those will be replaced by something else in the future–perhaps a ring, or something smaller, sleeker.

But no matter what form it comes in, a clock is essentially the same. It’s a device that tells time, that gives us information about when the future will happen, how much time we have until it comes. The only difference is that instead of checking the time, our devices have a way of keeping us occupied with it: apps, websites, games, messages, etc.

There’s always room for growth, the saying goes. Potential is something we can imagine. It’s not something we actually see. To have potential is similar to saying that we can do whatever we set our mind to. But will we set our mind on doing something, or will we just say we will?

When we are young, our potential seems limitless. We have an abundant amount of time, an abundant amount of options. But as we age, our time and options begin to dwindle. At some point, we must decide what to invest our time and energy into. We cannot spread ourselves thin, try to be the best at everything. We can only choose so many things, narrow it down to just a handful. For example, we choose hobbies and interests that matter to us, pursue jobs and fields that we can be successful in. For to be skillful and experienced in any field, it requires dedication, and years of practice.

Thus, we focus our talents and abilities on a handful of things out of a plethora. We become experts in them. We actualize our potential, bring what was once imagined into reality. But there is always room for growth–as the saying goes. We can always see a brighter future, a new ability to learn, and pursue new prospects and opportunities. Our potential is a limitless well of possibility. No matter how far we reach down and bring out the potential from within us, there always seems to be more.

When you work to survive, it’s easy to be motivated by that. If you stop working, then you won’t have income, and therefore, you won’t have the means to live comfortably. But when you’re working toward something that isn’t driven by income, but for creative or intellectual reasons, it’s a lot harder to stay motivated by it.

At first, the creative/intellectual energy will be intense when you start a project. You’ll work day and night on it, putting everything else aside. It’s as if that’s all you can think about, and nothing else matters except to finish the work–to see it through to the end.

But eventually, that tunnel vision focus, and that zestful energy you had, will begin to fade. The novelty of the project–the enthusiasm it inspired–will wear itself out. And then you will return back to where you began: back to normal. Back to the grind of surviving–making it through each day.

And with each day that passes, it becomes increasingly more difficult to reinvest yourself back into that project–which feels like lightyears away. Without a practical reason to pursue it, there seems to be no reason to continue working on it. It was just out of interest anyway.

Besides, no one was telling you to work on it. No one was encouraging you to finish it–to bring it to fruition. Even if someone did encourage you, they didn’t work on it like you did. You were there from the start. You were involved in each step. You know all the ins and outs like no one else. To work on it again, you have to tell yourself to keep working on it. You have to find a way to spark that interest again, to start up the engine of your inner spirit.

For being self-motivated, it can be a lonely place. Like you’re deep in the woods, and no one is interested in going with you on the unmarked, treacherous path that you’re on. It’s easy to turn around and head back home, to call it day and return back to normalcy. But you have to stay motivated. You have to keep telling yourself to not give up, to keep going, to believe that something great awaits you at the end.