Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Rediscovery


The last time I actually posted something was 6 months ago. My friend Ming Rui wrote me on Skype asking why I stopped updating stuff. I have no excuses, though I said I was busy, but it was actually me fighting against procrastination and my lazy self but it turns out that I always lose.

I never had a summer break for the whole time I am in Korea. For more than a year and 4 months that I have been there, the longest break I had was a 3 weeks break, which I spent travelling and meeting up with friends.

So, I finally got my 2 months summer break starting from 20th of June, right after my final exam and I am writing this with only 5 days or less remaining for my holiday (yes, I am lazy and a procrastinator and no, I am not proud of it either.). I bought the ticket to go home to Malaysia for 2 months early January this year and I have decided to spend 2 months back home seeing that I have been away for that 'long'. Looking back at how I spent my time all the while I am here, I was disappointed.

My highlight for the summer was my trip to Thailand but besides that, the whole summer was spent reflecting, thinking, contemplating, falling into depression, being paranoid, and so on. When you don't have much agendas or chores to do, you tend to sit down and spend your time thinking about stuff. I don't play video games anymore, and I can't stand to watch a movie because most of the movies (not all!) have plots so cliche that you know what is going to happen before it actually happens.So, I spent my time Facebook-ing and Kakaotalk-ing instead. Those two didn't help me a lot because not a lot of people actually give a damn about spending every second of their life talking to you.

Back here with no car and no efficient public transport system, meeting a friend became something I do rarely and I spend my time alone at home doing mostly nothing. Apparently, everyone thinks that being busy is the same as productive, and to be honest, I was one of them. At the end of a busy day, the only time you are able to reflect about something or if anything at all is the moment before you fall asleep. Of course, most of the times, you won't reflect anything at all.

Furthermore, I found out that people actually occupy themselves with stuff to do so that they forget about something and not to think about it. But of course that is not always true, some people do something completely different when they are stuck when they are trying to come up with a solution. This is so that when the brain is not thinking about how to find the solution, that's when they will find one. Usually, this applies well to those whose jobs involve creative thinking and critical decision making.

Yeah, so I was being really depressed thinking about stuff and being really paranoia about stuff. I started to notice all the small things that I chose to ignore back then. But recently I realized, when you finally sit down and think about stuff, feeling down while doing so, shift your focus and energy to what you really want to do, and stand back up, that is the time when you actually rediscover yourself.

Where are you now ? What are you doing now ? Are you where you want yourself to be ? or are you just pretending to be busy and thinking that you are productive ? Are you satisfied with yourself ? You want to change , if so what are you going to do ?

When was the last time you actually asked yourself this? When you are on the subway to meet your friends ? When you are hanging out with your friends ? Before you go to sleep ? Or when you are reading a book ?

No, only when you talk about it with your friends or you take some time out from the society and talk to yourself.

Know yourself, when was the last time you talked to yourself ?

What's the point going around places meeting people and knowing everybody else in the world but not yourself, though you learn how to communicate with people better if you spend 90% of your time hanging out with people. (In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell claims that any ordinary guy can be an expert in any field if he/she spends more than 10,000 hours doing it.) I am not saying that you shouldn't meet anyone at all, but if you do, make sure the talk is productive but not about the taste of kimchi after 3 months of fermenting it.

For me, this summer, has been mostly boring and unproductive, but I rediscovered myself, I finally got the time to think about stuff that I've been avoiding to ask myself. I've finally found something to work on, something to focus on.

My summer was not that disappointing after all. I just hope that I figured all these out way earlier, not yesterday.

What I want to say is take a time off, talk to yourself, know yourself, rediscover.


Keat.




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