Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Burning the Midnight Oil

Sleep tight, little child.

Unearthing nostalgic tendencies, we yearn to keep our childhood intact by our personal desires and dependencies. We look far, even overboard, to express the whimsical thoughts that we have in the middle of the battle of complexities. In the case of most readers here, whether we like to admit it or not, complexities caused mainly by the personality-gaining, gear-turning, stomach-lurching, habitat-forming, habit-inducing tasks we do in school.

We yearn to be in touch with our inner selves since preoccupation is the name of the game in the hype-driven hustle-and-bustle of strained lives immersed in the academe. Seeking to be admired by the external, positive forces, we place our attention in scrolls of self-help information to gobble up the changes yearned as much as we want. Feeling helpless, we seek for other's approval if indeed a changed man was born upon devotedly following the parameters set by the self-help experts.

From effective clock management to fraternal leadership, truckloads of suggestions are dictated in such a way that the paradigm being set deliberately would be followed. A checklist will be made to be stared at like a hawk ensuring no rule will this soul of yours fall short of. Everything, with your expectations laid out, will be straight A's if done with perfection. You continue to conform like being controlled by a Barnum & Bailey puppeteer.

Burnout. To faint is the only outlet available, to get out of all this conformity. Yet, you wake up again devouring all these information. You walk, and you go up. Little you realize, your soul is going down.

As we grow up a notch in life, we set more expectations to our mortal selves. This enables us to conform to these thoughts and penetrate the natural process by yearning to transform as quick as possible. We burn our midnight's oil in a grand proportion, there's nothing left for ourselves. We act as though every opportunity is our obligation to seize. Acting somewhat insecure. Dependent on the opportunities as though this is the only to be reinforced.

To alleviate the rising tide of this pandemic of burning, one suggestion still remains to be effective:

Sit down. Pray. Meditate. Exercise your thoughts. For self-help is helping yourself to unlock the peak of your thoughts. There is more than in your mind than what you think. Think on thinking. Widen your thought horizons. Take deep breaths, Feel. Revive.

You will realize that there are more opportunities than the physical ones.

Pockets of minutes per day of such treatment shall unearth your full potential.

Indeed, upon taking the suggestion, you have sucked the marrow out of life.

Now, like your magnanimous mom would say, nature says:

Sleep tight, little child