The Piston of Time

I like to keep my weekly blogging schedule because I like discipline. Discipline helps to shape the soul of a person. However when applying discipline, one needs to find the right balance: too strict a regiment suffocates a person and induces fear and distaste; too lax a routine invites laziness.

Balance is the key to everything. But that is the hardest thing to achieve. A sense of balance comes from having wisdom, but wisdom itself is a product of learning and experience. One of the key challenges of life is that, we are uncomfortable with uncertainty. We want clear, fixed answers to everything. We want rules: what is right and what is wrong. But a lot of things in life do not have such clear binary distinctions.

At every point in life, there's a best fit solution and never a perfect one. Finding the best fit solution--the balancing point that optimizes everything, is what we have to deal with all the time.

I like to use the analogy of a surfer when it comes to navigating through the ocean of life. A surfer has to find his balance every moment, reacting to the movement of the waves beneath him. By remaining in balance, he surges ahead. A surfer can never determine in advance, how he should position his body at any moment: balance comes with practice and experience. With enough practice, the skill becomes hardwired and instinctive.

For example, parents have to make difficult decisions everyday: How much freedom should they allow for their children? How much time should they spend playing computer games? How late are they allowed to stay out? There's no definite answer for all these. It is a problem balance again. And with experience, you get a feel of the right answer for the situation at hand.

I used to blog everyday. It was the discipline I imposed on myself then. But that was more than 15 years ago. The circumstances of my life was very different then: I had a very simple life in Indonesia, living alone with little care or worry. The discipline then was good for me. Without the strict regiment I imposed on myself, I wouldn't be able to do a lot of things that I am doing now.

With the current circumstances of my life, a weekly blogging schedule suits me perfectly: not too frequent and not too slack. I still feel a bit of 'pressure' when blogging day (Monday) comes because I have to figure out what to write and I have to will myself to type words onto a blank screen.

But I've had enough experience to know that, having a fixed schedule makes things easy and automatic. The ticking clock is the piston movement that powers the engine of your day. When the time comes, you just do it, because you are pushed by that perpetual machine that is Time. But you see how powerful that piston is. It has pushed me to this last paragraph of my blog post for this week. So when it comes to work, find the right balance by adjusting the regularity of your activities. The piston of time will do the rest for you.