“… sleep is profoundly intertwined with virtually every aspect of brain health. Lack of sleep over time can lead to an irreversible loss of brain cells—yet another debunking of the myth that sleep debt can be made up.” ― Arianna Huffington, The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time
But as the science literature suggest ‘Sleep’ –is a real shit.
And so, I am committed to fix it.
That is to say that I’m giving my every best to get a full 8 hours of cumulative rest time.
Good news is :- for the last three days I average at around — at least 7 hours of sleep. On Sunday however, due to lack of sleep followed by a high intensity workout early in the morning, I almost blacked out.
I just returned attending Puku’s wedding reception.
Sleep deprived. Exhausted. Feet too cold because of a long bike ride and that too on Kolhapuri chappal.
Here’s a thing worthy a mention cum appreciation — As i opened the door and entered my room; I found that the room heater was on. Plus, my meds were carefully put on the table, beneath the lamp which was on too, so that i can see.
I knew, that’s my dad!
What made this episode more special is that he was bed-ridden himself from the past two days.
p.s. I’m sneezing terribly as i sit to write this short quick piece in company of mild fever.
p.p,s. I just want to seize the gratifying beauty of this unique moment painted by my beloved Father (not that this has happened for the first time).
Holy cow, what could’ve been a better way end to the day!
As you read along these lines, sure you’re breathing and your heart is beating.
Are you aware my friend?
And, just in case, if you’re still reading, I want to assume you’re living a relatively comfortable life with all your most basic needs met, including WiFi!
Care to self-examine? self-reflect?
Cool!
However, did it ever occur to you, how delicate, fragile, vulnerable and absolutely naked our real Life is.
The most basic freedom we dance on; this food on the table; perhaps the blanket you’re in, this fine roof over your head; these beautiful clothes you wear & all-to-mandatory cosmetics you put on to add flavors to your otherwise simple-self or be it your lovely family, or the love of your life and even your own youth which we sadly, … insanely take for granted — can be easily snapped off of you or me, in any fucking m.o.m.e.n.t! ANY!
Care to realize?
Have you ever exercised life and the choices you make from this not-so-glittery perspective?
Plus, by saying that, I don’t mean only death as a certain, unexpected predicament to our normal life per se, because, sure there are so-fucking-many shits that can rob and kill us for real.
Real. Organic. Sustainable. Blissful. Fulfilling. Warm. Homogenous. Generous. Synergic. Symbiotic. Ever growing. Caring. Steel strong. No lies. Zero deceit.
Fundamentally driven by profound trust, rooted understanding, healthy commitment, lifelong support, unquestionable sincerity and mutual faithfulness.
Being respectful. Having earnest sense of gratification. Being there for one another. Intertwined with humbling friendship. Humorous. Humorous and humorous!
Well, in this 21st century of commercially infested love, or the idea of love, my honest question to you all my friends,
are you in a real relationship at all?
With yourself?
With your boyfriend? or girlfriend?
With your spouse? children? or siblings? cousins? or parents? grandparents? even your pets? or your friends?
Have you realized lately, that you hardly have time to do anything meaningful?
Anything, that really brings true joy in your life?
Anything, that’d help itch the lasting sense of satisfaction and fulfillment in your long-term memory?
Between obligatory work-overload and irritating noise slash distractions.
Between constant meeting schedules slash meaningless catchups.
Between superficial forced-chats with fake friends, and a persistent craving for dopamine shots — as a result of the strong efficacies of slot machine effectduly experimented around social media apps, in the name of maximizing user engagement (you remember, those scroll-down refresh feature in the apps we see).
Sure enough, our eyeballs; our most priceless attention-span and most importantly our precious time, certainly, has become somebody else’s money.
It’s appalling!
At the best of times, when science and technology, in-spite of empowering us and be at our service, has predominantly cheated and stolen from us.
At the best of times, when we deserve to live life freely and live it well; we are undoubtedly slaves of our phones and all the ephemeral pleasures we get from consuming largely bullshit information(in the name of ads and promotion and creative artifacts, et cetera).
At the best of times, when technology should be bringing us together has instead done just quite the opposite.
We definitely need a way out.
And, that my friend is Digital Minimalism or Digital Declutter.
Contextually speaking:
Author of Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari quotes,
“In a world deluged by irrelevant information, clarity is power.”
Cal Newport, a computer science professor and the author of Deep work says,
“Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.”
And, in a book The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday, he writes,
“Endless pleasure becomes its own form of punishment.”
In the same token, Young Seneca, on his essay The Shortness of Time, explains,
It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing.So it is—the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it.
[…]
And last but not the least; from one of my favorite maxims shared by the minimalists, where-in they’ve stated:
“Glowing screen is the new smoking.”
This lead us to derive one straight, simple fact; And that is — it is our individual responsibility to be clear, concise and truly intentional regarding the consumption of technology per se, and better late than never reclaim our mortal time in the process!
p.s., It’s been a month I’ve deleted an instagram app on my phone (excluding, every Thursdays'). This way, I drive and balance my use of social media and not the other way around.
Two Greek words both defining Time however, clearly from a contradicting perspective.
Kairos referring Quality of Time whereas Chronos to the Quantity of Time. As Jermy Arnold quotes best, ” Chronos was just a way of describing time in a chronological sense”. Meaning, Chronos is sequential time, i.e. It’s about the order of the world. The Sun rises then sets. The moon moves through the sky in a predictable path. They define our days and months. This is to say that the wrinkles etched on your face is chronos. On contrary, Kairos is about the subjective experience of living within time. They are the moments you spend with your loved ones, the moments of beautiful elation, of sheer happiness and fulfillment and joy and satisfaction.”
Simply put, the two have a fundamental difference of minutes and moments.
That, we experience chronos when we are impatiently waiting for something to be over and done with. Whereas, we’d experience kairos when we are so deeply engrossed in an activity that time seems to stand still. That, in kairos we feel in control of our time, whereas in chronos, it’s quite the opposite, we feel mostly fucked! Stressed per se.
Now let’s see:
Imagine you are walking on a street, earphones are plugged in playing your favorite song. There are people walking around you. Vehicles moving around you. A normal day for you nothing special about it, you won’t even have to be in the moment, the motor skills of your body takes care of everything. But then you saw a lady fell down on the road, and all of a sudden you are in the moment; You plug-out your earphones, run to the lady and help her get up, ask if she is fine. You offer her some water, make her rest, check for the bruises and calm her down. After assuring she’d be fine, you then leave plugging your earphones back and continue the walk but this time you have a wide smile on your face, since you help an unknown person without expecting anything in return.
[pullquote]at first the time was just flowing for you like Chronos but after seeing the lady fell on the ground, the time becomes a moment like Kairos.[/pullquote]
That is the difference between chronos and kairos — at first the time was just flowing for you like Chronos but after seeing the lady fell on the ground, the time becomes a moment like Kairos.
Sure thing, in the times where kids have grown and gone, where, we are continuously muddling along in a career’s slippery road, making a living, and just existing out of habit more than anything, and well sadly, knowingly or unknowingly, waiting to die some–day; the actualization of realization to living a kairos fueled life in this chronos world has become of a grave importance.
And, because, the problem for all of us is that the clock keeps ticking the wrong way and we are losing moments to the past, out of our reach, never to be regained.
This informative piece is a subtle reminder to you my dear friends, kairos or chronos?
European Philosopher, René Descartes once famously theorized, “Cogito, ergo sum.” Which translates to english as, “I think, therefore I am.” Meaning – our act of thinking about thoughts of thoughts is a proof of our existence, and vice-versa.
So, about my thoughts on thoughts?
Simple, It’s all our head!
Call it, the chatbot. Call it Knowledge or the illusion of it.
Call it the epitome of crazy-badshit-shenanigans or the manmade definition of normal.
Call it happiness or a fucking sadness.
Heed carefully, thoughts, they manifests in the language we speak. The tone we ensue. Conclusions we draw. Wave we create. World we see. Attitudes and behaviors that surfaces and bespeaks. In our ignorance. In our suffering. In Buddha that shelters inside us. And also in Monkey that annoys us from inside-out.
Thoughts; good or bad, healthy or harrowing, healing or hammering has absolutely no congruency, no connections, matter of fact — nothing to do with the reality of things we call Life! Not a fragment of shit!
Surgically dissect any thoughts that is ruminating around your head for quite sometime now. And, you won’t be surprised to acknowledge or to realize that these self-inflicted, illusionary warm-hole of mental excreta, have entirely no tangible objectifications, no logical expression, no forms, no substance, but mostly a crap-load-of gibberish, self-serving, disguised, deluded, non-sensicalcocksureness; successfully creating a gigantic blackhole of blindspots and simultaneously also insinuating horse-shit-of deafening confusions and the illusion of realism.
Thing is, thoughts have no flesh, no leash, no control over itself, no concrete floodgates. Thoughts are abstract, non-existential, paralyzing, decapitating. Emptying. Suffocating. Painful!
A tweet from @KapilGuptaMD, “Few men come to realize that their entire life has been lived inside their mind” surfaces on my twitter feed rightfully validates this thesis on my school of thoughts about thoughts.
Now, the question remains, how to not give in to our own alley alike enemy called thoughts?
Precisely, how to filter thoughts!
Well, rule no 6 says,
“Don’t take yourself so damned seriously!”
Why?
Because, If you take life (or your own thoughts in the language of René) too damn seriously, you miss out on the joy and the adventure life defaults at. You expect. You complain. You get too attached to your self-serving-self.
So, unsolicited piece of advice:
Mostly, help yourself to BE lightweight as you abide by DTYSDS platitude, so that you can in any given day, help somebody who’s in need of your help!
Mostly, chill so that you don’t feed yourself the drug of nihilism!
To the nutshell :-
Don’t take yourself so damned seriously is undoubtedly the right tool out of the box to weaponize yourself from your own thoughts!
Good luck!
And one last thing
Presenting you a story woven around Rule number Six
Two prime ministers were sitting in a room discussing affairs of state. Suddenly an aide burst in, shouting and stamping and banging his fist on the desk. The host prime minister quietly said, “Peter, kindly remember Rule Number Six.” Peter was instantly restored to complete calm, apologized for the interruption, and left the room. The prime ministers resumed their discussion. Several minutes later, another aide rushed in, shouting and stamping. Again the host prime minister quietly said, “Marie, please remember Rule Number Six.” Marie calmed down immediately, apologized, and left the room.
The visiting prime minister said “I’ve seen many things in my life, but never anything as remarkable as this. Tell me, what is this Rule Number Six?” The host prime minister said, “It’s really very simple. Rule Number Six is ‘Don’t take yourself so damned seriously.’” After a moment of pondering, the visiting prime minister inquired, “And what, may I ask, are the other rules?”
Nothing like ever: we live in a volatile, information-overload era, where delicate stuffs like motivations are superfluously sold over cheap fabrications of social-media businesses such as youtube , instagram and sorts.
I am not selling anything here. And, Motivational? This isn’t one at all.
No, this isn’t any phony, hollow-motivational-crap or some kind of ‘never-enough‘ inspirational ecstasy pill per se — which for so long, our brain has been so fcuk*ng stoned with. Rather, this is an honest unpacking of a disciplined truth that silently screams of the role of real, real work — in building something of real value.
[Side note: I’d like to dedicate this subtle, hard-core, spot-on, beautiful piece of work from Coach Sommer to my fellow troops back in the office.]
xx
Tim Ferriss’ book Tools of The Titans showcases an exchange between the author himself and coach Christopher Sommer, former men’s gymnastics national team coach, who, in an email wrote explaining the value of “the single decision.”
Tim, in his book writes:
We all get frustrated.
I am particularly prone to frustration when I see little or no progress after several weeks of practicing something new.
Despite Coach Sommer’s regular reminders about connective-tissue adaptations taking 200 to 210 days, after a few weeks of flailing with “straddle L extensions,” I was at my wits’ end. Even after the third workout, I had renamed them “frog spaz” in my workout journal because that’s what I resembled while doing them: a frog being electrocuted.
Each week, I sent Coach Sommer videos of my workouts via Dropbox. In my accompanying notes at one point, I expressed how discouraging it was to make zero tangible progress with this exercise.
Below is his email response, which I immediately saved to Evernote to review often.
It’s all great, but I’ve bolded my favorite part:
“Hi Tim,
Patience. Far too soon to expect strength improvements. Strength improvements [for a movement like this] take a minimum of 6 weeks. Any perceived improvements prior to that are simply a result of improved synaptic factilitation. In plain English, the central nervous system simply became more efficient at that particular movement with practice. This is however, not to be confused with actual strength gains.
Dealing with the temporary frustration of not making progress is an integral part of the path towards excellence. In fact, it is essential and something that every single elite athlete has had to learn to deal with. If the pursuit of excellence was easy, everyone would do it. In fact, this impatience in dealing with frustration is the primary reason that most people fail to achieve their goals. Unreasonable expectations time-wise, resulting in unnecessary frustration, due to a perceived feeling of failure. Achieving the extraordinary is not a linear process.
The secret is to show up, do the work, and go home.
A blue collar work ethic married to indomitable will. It is literally that simple. Nothing interferes. Nothing can sway you from your purpose. Once the decision is made, simply refuse to budge. Refuse to compromise.
And accept that quality long-term results require quality long-term focus. No emotion. No drama. No beating yourself up over small bumps in the road. Learn to enjoy and appreciate the process. This is especially important because you are going to spend far more time on the actual journey than with those all too brief moments of triumph at the end.
Certainly celebrate the moments of triumph when they occur. More importantly, learn from defeats when they happen. In fact, if you are not encountering defeat on a fairly regular basis, you are not trying hard enough. And absolutely refuse to accept less than your best.
Throw out a timeline. It will take what it takes.
If the commitment is to a long-term goal and not to a series of smaller intermediate goals, then only one decision needs to be made and adhered to. Clear, simple, straightforward. Much easier to maintain than having to make small decision after small decision to stay the course when dealing with each step along the way. This provides far too many opportunities to inadvertently drift from your chosen goal. The single decision is one of the most powerful tools in the toolbox.”
