One day I was listening to a podcast where the host interviews a businessman. At the end of the interview the host asked, “What are the things you do that make you successful?“. The businessman answered: “The reason I am successful is not because of what I do today. I owe everything to 2011 me. All his hard work, his grit, and his networking efforts paid off.“
That got me thinking: am I thankful for past me? Do my actions decades ago produce something good today?
When my daughter was only learning to speak, her word for green was “nini” and her word for car is “ke“. So she calls our green car “nini ke“.
First carWe bought green car a few months before my wife and I were married. The owner was living in the same condominium building that we were renting at that time. Originally I planned to buy a second-hand Honda or a Toyota, and I was not really impressed when I first saw the Ford sedan. My wife liked it though and so we decided to buy it.
It has been our primary mode of transport through the years. My sister borrowed it after our wedding to go to the province. When my wife got pregnant, green car was there for every doctor’s appointment. When it was time to deliver my daughter, green car was also there.
My daughter grew up knowing that green car was our car.
I didn’t expect my 4-year old daughter, or my wife, to be very emotional once the reality loomed that our old car is going away. Our garage only has space for one car and we will not have the time or the money to maintain another one. We decided that we will only sell it to a relative or a close friend so we know that green car will be taken care of.
MemoriesWe have been with green car for 6 years, and has made some memorable events with us.
I have only learned how to drive a few months before we bought green car, and I have used it to fetch my wife to and from work. Combined with having to park daily on a multi-level single lane parking space, it forced me to increase my driving skills.
One evening while parking (backing), the rear side of the car scratched the parking column resulting in large scratches. Since then, no other parking mishaps happened thankfully.
One day while going to the hospital for a doctor’s appointment, I made an illegal turn on a left turn lane and got apprehended by a traffic enforcer. Since my wife is expecting, I said that my wife is about to give birth (which she did one week later). The enforcers let us go without any fuss.
On our way back home from the province, there was a funeral march in the provincial road which caused very slow traffic. It forced me to level up my clutch and gear skills as not to stall on the hilly road. I had trouble learning those skills while on driving school.
En route to a beach resort, I made a wrong turn on the wrong resort, resulting in my front wheels being stuck in the sand. I tried everything but the car won’t move and it dug the wheels deeper in the sand. Thankfully some kind locals helped me by digging the sand around the wheel and putting water on it so it becomes compact.
Going home, I saw that the road was gutter-deep in flood. I made a risky decision to go through it. Thankfully the car didn’t stall but the next day I was not able to start the engine. It did start after a few tries though and didn’t have any long-term damage.
While driving in the province I heard a loud noise from one of the rear wheels. I continued driving for a few kilometers before I was stopped by a motorcycle driver informing me that I was driving flat. Later we found that a screw has embedded itself in the tire. Thankfully no one was hurt and no damage was done on the wheel assembly.
Moving OnThey say that a car is like a family member, which is true from my experience. I spend at least an hour washing the car which also serves as my meditation for the day. We made sure the car is maintained at least once a year, replacing any old or worn out parts.
When green car moved away from our home for the last time, it felt like losing a beloved pet. It was hard, but knowing that the new owners appreciated it made it better. Thank you for your service, nini ke!
July 13, 2008
Hello Marvin,
“Good morning, me.
Did you sleep well?
And did you wake up well?
Does the light and the wind,
the air and the smell,
all feel brand new?
Is each and every cell in your body awake now?
Today, you are who you are today.
You are a newer version of me.
Myself ten years from now…
That’s so far away for me that I can’t even begin to imagine.
Am I alone?
Or is there a wonderful person next to me?
Well, knowing me, I’m sure I am troubling
a lot of different people.
But that’s all right.
There’s no problem.
I will always be cheering you on.
I am no longer here
But I’m here today, and Ill always be
cheering for you right here…
Cheering for you, my only self.”
That was the first part of the letter. This is not something that I originally wrote but it is a quote from the 18th episode of Cowboy Bebop. In that episode, one of the main characters discovered an old video recording of her younger self, but she no longer remembers that time due to lost memories. After watching that episode it inspired me to write one for myself.
2008 was a difficult time. Having no job for months, dwindling savings, and problems with friends, I spent most of my time alone in my room. While this may seem like a bad thing, the good result is greater introspection and self-analysis.
I found myself depressed and confused back then, probably what you might call a “quarter-life crisis”.
Pain and suffering is inevitable, but I realized that all of this is temporary anyway.
He highlighted the weaknesses in my personality and listed them one by one. I found it refreshing that I was able to articulate these attributes honestly and openly. Then he asked me if I am different now.
If you are still feeling the same things as I described above, then don’t despair. This is happening because I am you. I, and you, are unique and have these unique traits. What we can change is how we handle these things.
While some of those weaknesses have been addressed, there are still some that remain. Reading and studying Stoicism helped me a lot in navigating my thoughts and curbing my weaknesses. My life experiences since then shaped me the most.
I know it is not healthy dwelling in the past, but at least give respect to the memories of other lives you touched and have touched you.
Even though that time was hard, he remained optimistic about the future.
So here, I am sealing it and if you are reading it now, then I am relieved, I survived after 10 years. I know you did well.
Best Regards,
You – 10 years ago.
I was already in tears as I reached the end of the letter. His message for me that I did well felt like words from a close friend or a treasured mentor.
I looked up as I finished the letter, envisioned me sitting in my room ten years ago, and smiled. “Thank you“, I whispered to my old self.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
I don’t like it when something happens in the day that ruins my routine. Some days there is something that needs to be done, or something unexpected that needs to be fixed and cleaned and it disrupts my schedule. I am also uncomfortable when I feel like I am not doing anything useful, like just lying down to rest or sitting somewhere to talk.
My days are fueled with caffeine-induced energy. I have been drinking coffee for years now, which started since I had a full-time job after graduating from college. I cannot imagine a day without drinking coffee and I make sure I get my fix any means possible.
This feeling of energy pushed me to work harder on personal projects and my job. Sleep became more scarce as I find it harder for me to fall asleep immediately when I go to bed. And since just lying there trying to get to sleep is not productive, I get back up and do something else. This resulted in having less than optimal sleep which becomes unnoticed due to the caffeine highs.
I also try to be physically active by going to the boxing gym two days a week. This gives me more energy throughout the day and I get to have a nice cardio workout as well. For a long time I did not feel the effects of poor sleep quality coupled with stress (both physically and emotionally).
And then it suddenly hit me.
It was midnight. I had just returned to our bedroom after a quick trip to the restroom and was preparing to go to sleep. Once I laid down however, I felt my heart racing and pounding uncontrollably. I started having these episodes in the past few days but they only lasted a few seconds. This time it was different.
The irregular heartbeats did not stop after a few seconds and continued on for minutes. I started to panic and at the same time I felt lightheaded (perhaps due to the panic). I woke up my wife and said I want to go to an ER. We prepared to go the hospital, all the while my heart still was beating quickly and irregularly. When we finally got in the car (ride-sharing service) en route to the hospital, my heartbeat returned to normal.
The doctors in the emergency room obviously did not find anything wrong after blood pressure tests and an ECG. They recommended me to see a cardiologist right away. The following days I had my blood tested, did additional ECGs, an Echocardiogram, and finally a 24-hour Holter monitoring.
The doctors advised me to stop taking caffeinated drinks such as coffee, tea, and carbonated drinks. As I see myself as “caffeine dependent” this was a major event for me. The first two days of no-caffeine days were hard: I felt weak, tired, and had a throbbing headache. These symptoms forced me to lie down to bed earlier than what I used to as I can’t do anything much in the evening.
After two days I started feeling normal again. To be honest, I did not expect my dependence in coffee to go away that easily. After two weeks of coffee-free days, I no longer feel a loss in energy during the day, I still feel awake, but I tend to get sleepy already before midnight.
All of these things that forced me to go to bed earlier had a much better impact than what I expected. Having a full night’s sleep gave me energy throughout the day without resorting to coffee. I started to feel better and the minutes-long irregular heartbeats no longer presented itself.
This experience exposed one major flaw in my personality: that I am not a night owl. Night owls are people who are (or think they are) more productive at night and so they tend to sleep late and also wake up late. Completely eliminating caffeine in my life proved to me that I am not really a night owl.
We need to be honest with ourselves. Are we really night owls or is it just the effect of our daily dose of coffee? If its the latter, then we may be heading towards disaster as our bodies slowly cannot cope with the lack of quality sleep. Granted that quitting coffee is not a pleasant experience especially in the short term, gradually reducing our dependence in caffeine may be better for us in the long term.
Thinking about death became such a taboo in modern society. However this was not the case centuries ago, and this is even one of the main ideas behind Stoicism. The possibility that I could die at any moment exposes the things in my life that does not really matter and those that do.
Health scares usually cause people to suddenly think about how they are living their lives, and I am no exception. This event caused me to think about my body’s needs more and made me more aware of how I abused it in the past.
It also made me think more about my daily priorities. Have I been working too much and thinking about work the whole day? Do I need to have more entertainment time to cope with stress? Am I losing quality sleep because I need to play and enjoy just so I can deal with stress? These questions point to possible solutions that I can start to implement in my life to make sure my body does not wake-up slap me again.
At this point I think I will no longer resume my coffee drinking days. Perhaps once I completely establish that my caffeine intake will no longer influence how I sleep and how my body gets rest, then I may one day enjoy a nice cup of coffee again. But for today, I resolve to be more aware of my body’s needs and stop ignoring its pleas for rest in the name of productivity.
Photo by Muhammad Raufan Yusup on Unsplash
I thought of the things that I can do for the week, I can:
And so at the start of the week I was excited at all those things on my mind. However, I still have a day job and so all of these plans needed to go before and/or after my work hours.
On the first day after my work, I thought of the next task I can do. I can finish that blog post for this month. Immediately waves of excuses flooded my mind:
All of these excuses seem perfectly reasonable to me at the time, and so I procrastinated and proceeded to play video games and other useless stuff like browsing the internet. This continued on beyond midnight until I finally went to bed exhausted.
The next morning, I woke up later than usual, as I was alone in the house and there is no one to wake me up. During breakfast I again feel excited about the day and the things that I can do during all those free hours, all the while doing useless stuff again to pass the time thinking I had the rest of the day ahead of me.
As my work hours ended again, I was faced with exactly the same situation yesterday and did the exact thing again: played video games and browsed the internet. This vicious cycle went on for a week until the whole week has passed.
In the end, I have accomplished the following:
Obviously I was frustrated at the results and I wanted to blame something or someone else. After figuring out that I had no one else to blame but myself, I reflected on what had transpired and I came upon these realizations.
Looking back at the hours I spent playing video games and browsing the internet, it added up to a pretty significant amount of time. Time that should be enough to have written two or more articles or be able to have sufficient progress in my ukulele skills or my side projects. Doing all those unneeded activities felt like time had passed so fast and in the end I have little (if any) results to show for it.
This is also true in the past, wherein I had indulged my free time playing games or just bluntly wasted time. I had all those free time and I still thought that I was too busy to do the things that should have more impact in my life.
One surprising realization for me is that having other people in the house prevents you from wasting too much time. Previously I have thought that responsibilities (most often for family) sometimes get in the way of me doing things that I wanted or needed to do, but having experienced that week alone without any distractions proved even more unproductive.
The tasks that we have for each day helps us focus more on the things that needed to be done and makes us more aware of the time. This awareness results in behavior and activities that reduce wasted time as our “free time” becomes more valuable to us.
The concept of having too much of anything appeals to most of us. In this situation the concept of having much free time, in the end distracted me from the things that are really important. I have realized that limitations make us treasure the things we have, and that things that we have in abundance are also the ones that we usually take for granted.
As with the previous realization, I have thought that if I had less responsibility at home I can do the things that I wanted to do for a long time. This experience taught me that those same responsibilities enabled me to plan my time more effectively, take my free time more seriously, and in the end it made me much more productive than when I am given a whole day all for myself.
In the book of Genesis, God created Eve to be a partner for Adam. I think this move is one of the best things God has done for us. Sometimes it is tempting to do things alone, like trying out restaurants that you have not gone to before, or shopping without worrying about your time or other people. My experience has taught me that these activities only satisfy for a very short amount of time.
To be able to cherish these moments, you will need someone else to share it with, like a friend, a partner, or maybe even your pet!
I would like to note though that all these realizations are my personal observations based on my own experiences. As with all things, there are exceptions and it is up to each of us to reflect on the things that we do every day and see if they genuinely makes us happy in the context of our lifetime.