Category: Reflections

I find that late afternoon naps create more urgency than morning or early afternoon ones. If I take a nap around the afternoon and wake up one or two hours later, I still have plenty of time to get things done, such as to make lunch, write, etc. But if I take a nap around 5 PM or 6 PM and wake up at 8 PM or 9 PM, there’s very little time left to get things done with the day coming to a close.

In fact, it creates more urgency because whatever chores are left need to be done right away. I can’t take my time and work on them throughout the day, or space them out. I have to do them one right after the other before I have to go to sleep. But if I’m extremely tired after a nap and just want to go back to sleep, I’ll set those things on the agenda aside for tomorrow.

Naps are one of those things that we don’t plan on but happen due to tiredness or exhaustion. Sometimes it just happens when I close my eyes as I’m watching TV and then I find myself waking up one or two hours later. It’s a strange feeling where it seems like the day has passed when it hasn’t, or when it seems like we only slept for a half-hour when several hours had passed. It’s like our bodies needed to catch up on missed-hours-of-sleep, or at least to recuperate its energy back.

In general, naps do a weird thing where it disrupts our routines and plans. We have to adapt ourselves around them, adjust to the limited time we have after we wake up. But I’ve also come to accept that they can be beneficial and even necessary, since they’re indicative of our minds and bodies telling us something: that rest is just as vital as being awake.

In the morning, I look forward to making coffee, since it helps wake me up, and during the winter months, it keeps me warm. But the more I drink of it throughout the day, the less I want to drink it, since it starts to lose its flavor and begins to taste bitter.

During the late morning and afternoon hours, I usually drink water, or something sweet and refreshing like iced tea or maybe a smoothie (if I’m in the mood for it). But during the evening hours, my taste buds crave coffee again. I hold off on making it since I like to drink water or iced tea with dinner.

I’ve drank coffee at night before, which has given me some trouble with going to sleep at my scheduled hour. I’ve tried drinking hot tea as a substitute, although that has given me trouble going to sleep as well. On a successful night, I’ll occupy my mind with a game of chess or write a post or watch a movie so that I don’t think about coffee. Sometimes I’ll just force myself to drink a cup of water if I’m craving coffee. But the one rule I always have to remind myself is: if I drink coffee at night, I won’t be able to sleep.

Often in life, I find that I have to make rules for myself to keep myself disciplined, focused, and consistent. It’s not enough that I just make something a habit, but I have to have a rule in my mind that says: “Don’t do it, or else . . .,” which functions as a reinforcement to the deterrent.

I remind myself that coffee time is in the morning, that if I drink it at night, I won’t be able to go to sleep. The same could be said with many other things, such as watching a movie past a certain hour, reading a book late at night, or completing work in the evening when I should save it for tomorrow (all of which keep me up until the wee hours). There’s a time and place for everything, but sometimes our want of something (such as the things listed above) try to supersede our rules by generating rationalizations that trick our minds into giving in.

For me, the rules, in conjunction with good habits, is a way to stay unperturbed and disciplined. But that doesn’t mean it’s always easy. For each person, it takes figuring out what the rules are (not to mention refining them), and what habits we can practice consistently that will make us successful.

I remember in college one evening driving around to find a place to eat with a friend. We drove from restaurant to restaurant, only to discover that the wait-times were somewhere between forty-five minutes to an hour at each one. We continued to drive further away from campus (this was in Richmond, VA), until we finally gave up (since we were about thirty to forty minutes away from campus) on a casual dining restaurant and settled on fast food.

That was many years ago, and now, if I wanted to go out to a restaurant, one, I’d probably quit after the first restaurant that told me the wait-time was forty minutes, and two, I’d go back home and just raid my pantry to make something to eat. I think there comes a point where you’ve maxed out on the experienced of eating out, and you’re content with making food at home. At least, that how it is for me.

When I make food at home, depending on the mood I’m in, I’ll make something that doesn’t require a ton of clean up afterwards. But if it does require a lot of clean up, I’ll clean as I prep the food (or put dishes in the sink as I go), so that after I eat, the clean up is short and minimal. And when I make food at home, there’s usually leftover afterwards that I can save for tomorrow or the day after that.

No longer would I spend an hour or more (as I did then on that college night) driving around to find a place to eat. But the benefits of eating out, whether if it’s with friends or family, is that it is a social experience, since it’s a time to converse, laugh, and to catch up with people you might not have seen in months or years. It’s harder to do so when you’re eating alone at home, or if you’re just grabbing something quick to eat during your lunch break.

Of course, one could argue it is cheaper to not eat out, especially when you include tip and the cost of the meal itself (as opposed to making it at home). But then again, eating out can be a fun experience when you want to enjoy a meal and catch up with someone and not have to clean up afterward or spend minutes (or hours) to cook the meal. Besides, eating out depends on who’s going out to eat, right? If you’re driving to your friend’s or family’s home, that’s technically eating out (and vice versa). Or instead of eating out at a restaurant, eating out can be a table at a park, a table at a food court, or just eating in the car while parked in a parking lot during a road trip.

It can be difficult to read when we’re tired, when we’re about to fall asleep and can barely finish the next sentence. Even though the chapter ends in one page, we press forward despite our tired eyes and yawns, hoping that we have just enough energy left to finish the last couple of paragraphs.

It’s kind of like finishing a race when we’re all out of breath. Making it there seems like an impossible task, and as our legs and arms begin to feel heavier with each step, we press forward, one step at a time, all the while our bodies are shutting down. Once we make it to the finish line, instead of celebrating, we keel over and pant from exhaustion, relieved that it’s over.

When the body is at the point of exhaustion, it’s telling us to stop and rest. But in some cases, the mind wants to quell it while telling us to do more. And at those moments, it’s like the mind and body are becoming two, disconnecting, becoming unharmonious, all the while pulling in opposite directions. The mind says “keep going,” while the body says “no, stop and rest.”

Despite our tiredness, we sometimes press forward until we reach the finish line, whether that’s the end of a chapter, staying up late to study, staying up late to finish work, wrapping up a DIY project, etc. But experience shows that when we press forward beyond the limits of fatigue, beyond what can be deemed as burn out, it’s possible for us to make mistakes, to overlook details, or to even stop and quit when we’re so close to the finish line.

Knowing when to press forward and when to stop is a double-edged sword. The mind always see the impossible as possible, whereas the body knows it when it senses it. But deciding what to do at the crossroads isn’t so much a matter of will but of knowing how far our limits can take us.

It’s said that life is full of ups and downs. It’s great when we experience the ups, but none of us likes the downs. But just as the waves rise, so must they fall.

Those downs are the bumps along the road, the disappointments that come our way. Bumps seem easier to deal with, since they can happen and disappear instantly. But disappointments . . . they can stay with us, alter our mindset. In fact, it can be hard to deal with disappointments, especially when they seem unsurmountable. It’s like rooting for your favorite sports team and they end up losing again and again. You hope that they’ll end their losing streak on their next game, but when they lose again, you feel defeated–like there is no way to escape this dreary cloud that hangs over them–and you.

Sometimes I look at disappointment like a passing season–something that occurs temporarily for a day or two. It occurs in life in all sorts of ways, from someone applying to colleges and they didn’t get into their number one choice, to a player (or a team) that didn’t win a game, or to any of us upon hearing bad news from someone close to us or on the news. And when we hear enough bad news, the streak begins to set in, and we begin to accept it as the norm, although somewhere in the back of our minds, we know that it’s not.

On the other hand, disappointment can drive us to do better, to try harder, to change how we’ve been doing things to achieve a successful outcome. It can lead us to introspection and to reevaluate what our expectations are of others and of ourselves. And when we come to understand disappointment, we know that it’s an entirely different thing to be disappointed at ourselves for not doing better or not making wiser or smarter choices versus being disappointed with a team or with something as intangible as the Stockmarket, which didn’t perform to our liking.

When disappointment happens, it can feel like it’s shaking the foundation of what we believe, plunging us into a mindset of defeat. But just as we plunge into it, so can we rise up from it too. Overcoming disappointment depends on how we react to it and deal with it, in seeing it as more of a trial, a test, an aberration in life, rather than something that’s permanent or impossible to overcome. In this sense, a disappointment is merely a down amongst many in the ups and downs of our journey. It’s a reminder that our path is never smooth and easy, but one teeming with challenges as well as victories.

There needs to be a time each day where we are unplugged from electronics and all things media. We need time for our minds to reset, to be still, calm, and undistracted by the busyness around us. We need to put our cellphones away, turn off the TV, the gaming systems, etc.

Even if it be for a few minutes, our minds need to soak in the silence, to be immersed in it. Some people do this by setting aside time for meditation, prayer, relaxed breathing, walking, observing a natural scenery, such as a pond or a river, looking at the petals of a flower, or by just closing one’s eyes. In doing so, it’s as if our minds our sailing somewhere–reaching an unknown destination while we watch the waves undulate around us, the bubbles rising to the surface, the fish swimming with the current. There’s a peace and calmness to the silence that washes away the chaos of our day, the worry, angst, and troubles that sprang up as soon as we had awoken–walking on hot charcoals each hour.

When I’m unplugged, that’s when my imagination can flourish and take root. It’s when ideas start to flood my mind, when I can daydream about fantastical worlds and adventures, when I can think on my own, find answers that only my mind can make sense of, and draw sensible conclusions about the world around me and the dilemmas of my day to day life.

When we’re plugged in to the news, social media, TV shows, etc., we’re bombarded with words, ideas, images and sounds that we can barely make sense of, nor have time to critique or question, since they transition so rapidly (and without rhyme or reason, such as in commercials). It’s as if the more we consume on a daily basis, the more passive our minds become, the less time we give to our own minds a chance to think, create, and imagine. When we’re plugged in for hours on end, we’re distracted from the time we could be using, pulled away from the source of our talents, energies, and thoughts, which is our minds.

But when I’m unplugged, I can create, write, think, and come up with something new that’s original to me. I’m not focused on the endless things that are happening around the world (which I have no control over), but I’m guided by the intentionality of my mind, channeling my thoughts and energies through it. Whether I’m taking a walk, or penning down my goals on post-it paper, there’s an autonomy and independence that comes from it where I’m in the driver seat and not the devices. It’s like seeing things time as a medium of possibilities and opportunities rather than half-hour or hour chunks that will be lost and consumed by things that merely take up time.

(I must add that there is the exception to using technology when it is to create, such as with animating or writing, as I’m doing with this post, since there’s an intentionality to it where the purpose is not to plug in to current events or the going-ons in social media, but to use technology as a means to create and express something. The same could be said with listening to music while writing or making art, since it sets the mood for the artist as they create.)

Each day comes and go in the blink of an eye. When we wake up, it feels like there’s a long day ahead of us, endless hours to fill up, so many things to do. But when the day comes to a close, all the individual events that seemed important at the time are simply forgotten. In hindsight, it all seems like a blur. As we lay in bed, falling asleep, we wonder what we accomplished, what we added to our lives, what we created or discovered that made it distinct and special apart from any other day.

On some days, we accomplish very little. On other days, we’re so occupied by the events, deadlines, chores, tasks, catch-ups, capricious decisions, spontaneous epiphanies that grabbed our attention, like organizing a pile of papers that have been sitting on our desks for months, or cleaning up a spill, etc., that we have so little time to accomplish what had planned or wanted. But I’ve realized overtime that not everyday is about the accomplishments, of what I got ahead in, because there are days for reserved for that, while other days are meant for experiences.

What each day brings is not just productive opportunities, but trials, surprises, and insights–some more than others. There are days where we don’t feel like doing anything, and days where we feel motivated to get everything done. There are days where we feel lost and don’t know what to do, and days where everything is crystal clear and mapped out like a flowchart. There are days where we feel like we’re wasting the hours, and days where it feels like there aren’t enough of them to accomplish everything on our agenda.

There was a time when I was young when I had laid on the grass on my back and stared up at the sky during a summer day. I was lying on an open field, much like a soccer field, and I stared up at the blue sky and watched the clouds roll by, and it seemed like an eternity for them to move just an inch. The minutes and hours of our days, in contrast, roll by so much faster than those clouds, almost as if we’re always in hurry–or need to be. When I remember that day in my youth when I watched those clouds roll by imperceptibly, time as we define it, whether a second, a minute, an hour, or a day, is just an intangible thing we simply remember but can’t hold onto, except for those profound moments that stay with us.

In fact, we don’t remember most days, since they are merely a blur, a mosaic of events, of memories we love or hate or ones that we would rather forget. We don’t remember each day, but we do remember the startling and breathtaking moments contained within them. Perhaps it is those rare and uplifting moments that are vital to existence, that give us meaning and an understanding of what life is all about; moments that rattle our mundane experiences and give us a window into something new, into something that broadens our minds, and is the reason we wake up each day.

Loose change has that cumulative effect where the more of it you collect, the more it adds up. Even a small pile of loose change gives the appearance of it being more than it’s worth. A couple dozen pennies might look like twice or three times its value (from a glance, it’s not exactly the sum of its parts).

With pocket change, we don’t think much of it. We empty it out and put it somewhere like on the counter or in a drawer. But if we do this long enough, eventually that pile of grimy and toned loose change begins to look like it might be worth several dollars. It really depends on the size of the coins (i.e. nickels, quarters, half-dollars even) and how high they stack up.

Besides, loose change doesn’t seem all that important compared to a dollar bill, or the number in our bank accounts, but as the saying goes, never judge a book by its cover. I once found a dime in a chunk of change I had collected over the years, thought nothing of it until I saw it sandwiched between a stack of dimes. It stood out because under the light, the rim on it shined like the crescent of a moon. I removed it, inspected it from all sides, noticed it didn’t have any copper on it.

I looked up the date on the obverse, saw that it was a lot older than the rest of the stack. I forget exactly what the date was (maybe in the 1950s), but that’s when I learned that it contained ninety percent silver.

Gratitude is one of those things that we have to remind ourselves of, since it’s easy to become fixated on what we need and want. It strikes us in times when we realize how fortunate we are to have what we have, or when we lose something valuable (or when we’re on the brink of losing it), and we come to the realization that we should’ve cherished it more, whether that means spending more time with the people we care about, or not griping about how inadequate something is when it’s perfectly fine and functional (i.e. wanting a new cellphone, car, or computer, when what we have works just fine (and it’s only three or four years old!)).

In our day-to-day lives, our minds are set on the things we need to earn, achieve, or acquire. We’re driven to pursue what’s missing, what we don’t have, or what needs to be done. Regardless of all the possessions or accolades we have, there’s always something that’s missing, something that’ll fulfill us. Of course it never does once we have it, since that feeling of elation and contentment will soon begin to fade, and we become fixated on the next thing to pursue.

But in this state of mind, gratitude is hard to find. We don’t see it because we’re looking ahead rather than cherishing what we have and accomplished along the way. We must pause amidst the busyness of our lives to be grateful, and be still and allow the silence to help us discern it. Because it is only then that gratitude can be noticed, which will show us what we have–and how ephemeral it all is.

Both success and accomplishment can mean the same thing: to attain or achieve a goal. But when wealth or status are tied in with their usage, the meaning changes from one that is personal to one that is defined by earnings and wealth.

According to the dictionary, success has a duel meaning when it comes to achievement: to paraphrase, a goal attained, or a goal measured by monetary wealth (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/success). For example, one can say that they succeeded at college, or that they run a successful business. Accomplishment, however, has more to do with the attainment of a goal, and perhaps, the awards or accolades that come with it. (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/accomplishment) But to say one runs an accomplished business has different connotations compared with running a successful one. For example, a successful business is one that is defined by its earnings, but an accomplished one is recognized by its awards or merits.

When it comes to our personal goals, success and accomplishment are clearly distinguishable, since we can be accomplishment in the sense that we’ve produced many works or have finished various projects, although they might not be successful in terms of wealth. Another example could be someone who has learned a new language. They might be accomplished in the sense of being fluent, as well as being able to read, write, and speak in that language, despite not being successful in having earned money from it (i.e. as a translator or interpreter).

When we first start learning or pursuing anything, we start from scratch, with little to no rudimentary knowledge of the fundamentals. We set up goals along the way–small ones–that are like baby steps in the pursuit of higher and more challenging goals. As we master each level, progressing from beginner to intermediate, we acquire more knowledge and skills that make us more efficient and experienced in that endeavor. And along the way, we’ve been defining our successes by the goals we reached, but certainly not because of the wealth we earned.

Thus, when we define our success by our earnings or wealth, this can set us back, discourage us even. It could take years until we’ve earned anything or have become financially successful at it. It begs the question of why we even start learning anything. Out of interest? For external reasons, like wealth? Are we pursuing it because of the success we’d like to earn, or because of the experience and challenge it gives us–the creativity and thought it stirs in us?