오후 9:39
I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (323-324)
As evening settled itself, I felt a wistful sort of heaviness in my body. It was only seven or eight o’clock and yet all I think I could do was sleep. It was not that I had wanted to sleep, but that because there were so many others I could be doing and would have wanted to do, sleep was the only thing that could fit the time. Had I noticed the way I thought of that earlier, maybe I could have made better sense it then. What did I mean by ‘fitting the time’? It was as if I had again a motionless calendar in front of me, one divide into chucks of colours that would end somehow when I had stopped updating it. Not only that, too, but also of how today and the following days had made their marks on my mind. Today was divided into chunks of a desperate attempt at resting, followed by minutes too long in front of the mirror, and then a rushing through a quiz about a reading I was yet to finish, and then some other invitation again, followed by a going out that was not able to fulfil its ultimate purpose, and finally dinner in front of the television which was followed by a family video chat—the break from a screen that allowed me to notice my brewing lethargy.
The past few days had felt rushed, but it had always been in a way that made me think there would be something in return for all those hard work. I latched onto the thought that if only I successfully finish all my responsibilities, I would then be free, forgetting what I had already learned that there is no such thing.
There is no end to this, to anything, right? Weekends, supposed rest days, add to the confusion. Or at least the illusions of such days. In my mind when I think of Sunday, I think of last Sunday in which I had wanted to do more things that I could—the lack of activity was because of circumstances. It was neither productive nor wrong: only it bothered me so much because it did not go according to the plan I had in mind.
What would happen then if I simply get up in the morning, walk the dogs, walk myself, do some chores and cleaning, work, follow through such routine? All those without thinking whether I should do the next thing? Or without being preoccupied with so much thought? Maybe that is one way morning walks had been getting tiring: it was not my body that was exhausted, by my mind. Hence, work had been difficult. Besides that I had also been spending more time thinking about what I should do or need to do. What is the remedy for all of this?
Ah, I guess this is where a routine would come in handy. I can be certain that I would be able to walk the dogs and myself and exercise and eat because all those follow a routine—a natural one at that, something that I did not force unto. Same with sleep: all I need to do is be in bed before midnight and at around dawn is when the dogs and I get up. Maybe five hours of sleep with no nap is okay. Sometimes I worry that I might not have had enough sleep but today I heard a reading that indirectly told me that i might simply be stuck thinking about the past in that aspect. Maybe I no longer have sleep dept. Everything has now been paid for.
How then do I put in work? How of the rest of life?
Languages, art, philosophy, fiction, poetry, café gyü, Twitter, Instagram, music, people, motion pictures.
Can I do all of those everyday? Should I? Just as how I walk the dogs ‘everyday’?
Ah, but have not we figured those out already? The natural routine for all of those…
It is best to work on art and other visuals in the morning—but sometimes, there is also a beauty to art in the evening…
Can I trust myself to work on all of them without having to be conscious about them all the time?
Like painting: I always end my painting sessions. I always get into a part when I had done enough. Or writing. There is always an end to every good thing and I would know when that is by intuition. And then there would always be the next time.
Maybe a factor too is how during the past few weeks, all of my thoughts about work had been directed toward this idea of ‘this is all you have to do’. Once the thing that was required of me for the day was through, I would not do anything else anymore. I would rest, because by then I would need to do so. But what of now?
How can we live better? Live more freely?
We do what we ought to do at the moment.
The body, mind, and spirit would know.
Have faith and trust the I.