learning less everyday
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This is a story.
There was once a ball of light. It came into this world with a glow so bright that everyone can’t help but welcome it with cuddles, blankets and milk.
Although the ball of light is curious by these gestures, it doesn’t question their love and welcomes them with glowing pride.
Soon, as the ball of light got used to the milk and cookies, it began to ask for more. It wants muffins and cheesecake. It wants them to be served on a golden tray. It wants to be carried in a golden chariot to meet them.
After a while, the people who welcomed the ball of light finds it more and more difficult to meet the demands of this ball. So the ball of light rolled around. It rolled outside the comfort of milks and cookies only to be treated to trash cans and banana skins.
Determined to earn its own golden trays and golden chariots, it hurled itself towards the dusty world.
Finally, it got its golden chariot. But the chariot no longer carries a ball of light. As it gathers more dust, the ball of light started to dim. Dusts started settling on to the ball of light, creating layers upon layers of crust. After a while, the ball of light started to get sluggish. The crust formed upon itself is slowing the ball down. It could no longer roll as it use to. The light no longer shines as it use to.
The ball of light doesn’t know why has it come down to this stage. As it look upon its reflection in the mirror, it sees a small ray of light shining through the cracks. The ray of light looks strangely familiar. As the ball of light ventures deeper into the source of this light, it came to the conclusion that it emanated from itself!
It finally realises that it has lost its own light in blind pursuit of other lights. Gold, after all, only reflects light from other sources. The ball of light knows what to do now. It knows it has to find its own light before its too late.
p/s: Inspired by stories from Karate Thoughts Blog, for example, a story of a Karate Sensei traveling in a time machine.
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For the first time ever since I quit my day job, I feel the cross roads. I know I’ve purposefully created this set of crossroads. Yet, when I realise I’m standing in the middle of it, I feel lost.
Now, the cross roads seem to have 2 main roads – be an employee in some firm or go into business. My third eye saw a third road. It hasn’t been surfaced with tarmac. It’s dusty, even cloudy. Doesn’t seem like anyone has been on that road before. And yet, my third eye sees it. And part of me is telling me to go down that road.
Seeing this road reappearing now starts to cast some shadows of doubt on myself. I don’t think I’m a confident person. I guess when faced with new untested things, there will always be doubts. Yet, this test here shows that I’m innately confident, overconfident in fact! I guess when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. In this case, the road will appear. Unfortunately, this road is not clear. I guess I am the one who’s not clear. Not clear where this road will take me. I seem afraid. Afraid of what? Afraid of failure? Afraid of throwing everything away? Throwing everything that I’ve spent so much time collecting? Accumulating?
A thought does come to mind now.
How about…
Forget about the third road, as ultimately, there’s only one road – your road.
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Yikes! I’ve been tagged, thanks to Rick. It looks fun enough though, so goes the rules:
The meme works as follows. You post five things about yourself. Four are untrue. One is true. All are so outlandish, implausible or ridiculous that no one would be inclined to believe that any of them are true. And despite the pleas from your readers, you never divulge which is true and which are fabrications. You then tag five other people (four seriously and one person you are pretty sure would never participate).
Here’s my 5 implausible things:
Now… the 5 “lucky” ones to do the same would be…. Prata Princess, Jonathan, Matt, Teck, and Michael.
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I was frantically scratching the walls that engulfed me, trying to crawl myself out of the self-made abyss. The more I think about it, the more it doesn’t make sense. My life’s training so far has been to analyse things. Weigh the pros and cons. Make decisions based on that. And yet, in this matter (and probably many matters to come), analysis seems to be the antithesis to my well being. So I did what my heart told me to do.
I quit my day job.
It’s not that the day job is bad. It’s not that I don’t realise the economy is bad. It’s not that I don’t realise everyone else is losing their job and I’m voluntarily losing mine. All these reasons made it more difficult for me to make this decision.
There seems to be something I need to do, but I don’t what that is yet. The day job is not fun anymore, it’s just to pass the day and earn a living. A lot of what is said here strikes a chord with me as well.
I don’t know where this will take me, and I wouldn’t advise this to you as well (yet!). All I can say is this – I am learning. I am learning how to uncomplicate my life. I’m learning why less is more. I’m learning if I can work less and make more profits. Basically, I’m learning the meaning of “less”.
I guess “learning less everyday” does sum it up. 
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A bout of sickness, a torrential rain of work, the lack of tai chi practice, migrating to a Mac, playing too much word challenge on facebook… and probably there are more excuses, but there’s been a lot going on in my mind, which explains the dry writing season. I’ve even stopped writing in my journal till a few days ago. It’s been one uneasy silence. Silence in words, but in my head, the silence is deafening.
Today, I treated my silence with words from a page.
I walked into a book shop, and picked up a book called “This is water” by David Foster Wallace. I finished it within the 20 minutes I was there. It’s not so lengthy like a standard book. You can even find the whole text online (if you google hard enough). I read it quickly because I felt the message. It seems to be talking to me there and then, when I needed it.
And then another string of words jumped at me. It’s one of those motivational wallpapers (those that are literally on a wall, rather than those that fills your computer screen). And , surprise surprise, it’s on water again. It’s about a lecturer meeting a group of his ex-students who’s complaining about the stresses in life. He then asked them to pick up a cup of water from a table. Everyone did, only to find out that they picked the best looking cups. The lecturer’s message?
If all you want is water, why go for the pretty cups?
Maybe these water messages will drown out the drought. And I thought of these while having my dinner by the pool. Must be a sign…
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I’ve read about working for free in Rich Dad Poor Dad. Rich Dad would ask his son and Robert to work for free, so that they don’t ever work for a monthly pay.
I’ve recently just understood the meaning of working for free. In fact, I’ve been working for free for all these time, when I’m training for my Tai Ji.
Somehow, it’s the things that we do for free that makes life seems more meaningful, until what you do for free is being exchanged for something else, like fame and fortune. And then it becomes complicated, like training for a medal, or training for glory, or training for money, or even training to look good. It’s difficult to ask the mind to concentrate on one thing, and then at the same time focus on attaining something else. See, on the one hand, you’re training to learn the art. On the other, you’re training to attain some physical reward or recognition.
I don’t know whether I’ll ever need the recognition, but the training towards attaining recognition might be counter-productive to learning. The more you train, the less you learn.
Maybe working for free does have its merits. Get paid doing something else. I guess that’s what the day job is all about.
So, I’m good in numbers, spreadsheets, and maybe some writing. Anything I can help you with for free? 
Hopefully, if I really add value, the money will come. I guess that’s what Rich Dad’s advice really is. Don’t work for the next pay check. Work to really add value to other people’s life. Money, fame, glory will then follow. So the theory goes…
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For the first time, I find myself enjoying an allergy. Ever since I started journalling again, there seem to be a strange lure for me to journal daily. Whenever I miss a day of journalling, it feels as though I’ve missed doing something important in life! It seems I’m allergic to non-daily journalling.
There are days that I really don’t want to journal because, well, I don’t really want to. There’s only so much reflection you can do in a day. And sometimes, a mirror is not what I need. Still, I’ve continued to write everyday just to see what comes out at the end of the fingers tapping on the keyboard.
Ignoring the crucial daily activities like eating and drinking, do you do something everyday that you just can’t do without?
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Just to highlight a point in my previous post about how little words we use, I’ve analysed that same post and according to UsingEnglish.com, the following are the statistics:
Word count is 388.
Number of unique words used is 176.
Number of words in the dictionary, say a conservative 100,000
% of unique words used is 0.176%
Top 10 most used words: the, to, this, of, and, i, a, is, art, techniques
I’ve used less than 1% of the total words in the English language to write that article. Cool huh?
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If you’re working during this period, good! You’re one of the lucky ones with a job. I too still have a job, which has been keeping me quite busy these days with all the gloomy restructuring / retrenchment news. However, i’m finally taking a break – 10 days in a stretch. Woohoo!
So far, i’ve been catching up on my reading (books, blogs, facebook etc), deciding on what to read next (Three Cups of Tea, The Logic of Life, Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction are on the list so far), reorganising my internet bookmarks (there are just too many dead sites, and too many sites i will never ever go to…), optimising my laptop (it’s been getting sluggish with too many applications), optimising my iPhone (yes, i succumbed to temptation, but more about that in this post), and deciding on the big question, as always, what on earth am I suppose to do or be in this lifetime?
As I ponder about the big question, I’m still adding lots of to-dos on my holiday to-do list. These are one of those seemingly urgent but unimportant things, which will make you feel that you’ve done a lot but accomplished nothing, which seems to be the theme of my 2008 so far.
So, over this holiday period, i’ve decided to think about some concrete goals that I want to achieve over the next year. I’m not one for new year resolutions because I’ve never made them work. There are either too many goals, or I didn’t keep track of it. I don’t sign up for gym memberships at the start of the year, because I don’t like gym. Things I do like, like writing and Tai Chi, are not financially burdensome, but difficult to keep a consistent rhythm to do it regularly. I’ve read somewhere that even consistent marathon runners find it difficult to step out in the morning for their training, but once they manage to take that first step out of the door, everything flows.
My first step now will be to think through what has worked and what hasn’t, and to decide on just one (or at most 2) goals to be achieved over 2009. I will be posting this on new year’s eve so that I set a deadline for myself.
What is your first step towards a more fulfilling 2009? With that, I wish you a very merry holiday season!
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