Abraham Yeung - Week 11 Q3 Blog 4 - Just Some Thoughts I’ve Had For A While
Every day, I basically follow the same routine. Wake up, scramble out of bed, go to school, come back, take a shower, and stare at my phone. Wake up, school, study. Wake up, study, binge novels in my free time. Constant, unceasing, endless stimulation.
It disgusts me. Some days, I go to sleep with eyes throbbing, my body telling me to stop. What am I wasting my time here for? Schoolwork isn’t going to help me be successful. Certainly not the 300 chapters I’ve read in the past two days. I’ve got to stand out, I’ve got to be a leader, I’ve got to be something special in order to have a chance to maintain my mediocrity.
And so I fall into stories, with their beautiful idyllic worlds. It just seems so perfect. No college, no big and scary world. Simple and straightforward. Good and evil. The stronger person wins. And even if you fail, you can still go and live a quiet life on some hill somewhere. Yet deep down, I know I can’t be doing this. I feel disgusted with this procrastination, I feel like a failure every time I pick up my phone to find another novel to read.
But what can I do? I watch my father come home every day, and he’s always working. Not always for his job, but for himself. To be successful, you need to constantly strive for improvement. Unceasing, endless improvement. And if you slip up just once, you lose everything. Stagnation means failure. I don’t want this. It’s so chaotic, this world of ours. It fills me with a sense of fear, of despair. It’s already bad for our parents, isn’t it going to be worse for us? What can we do? The people with true power are all old and uncaring. Politics is basically a choice between Hell and Super Hell. There’s nothing to look forward to in life.
And yet, I still feel motivated to do something. Giving up would be a waste of my parent’s efforts. Despite their hardships, my parents are still able to love and stand proudly. Why would I give up? Even if I end up nowhere, at least I’m six feet above the people that gave up.
This dog that my mom’s looking after as part of a pet sitting service, looks so free. It’s something like twelve years old, and yet it looks like it hasn’t got a care in the world. When it wants food, it eats food. When it needs to play, it plays. It jumps up with joy when it sees the person it likes. I want to live life like that. A peaceful one, where I can be happy and content. Stopping the unceasing stimulation is a start. Earlier today, I sat. Just sat. No thoughts, no lights, just on the ground, in my room. It might seem stupid, but in those couple of minutes, I felt something I wanted to feel for a long time. Freedom.
Hi Abraham. Really quickly, on the topic of reading, I love to listen to the audiobook while reading along. I know this isn’t a profound strategy, and you probably already know of it, but just in case, I would recommend it. It definitely helps you (me) become more immersed in what I’m reading and much more imaginative. And a lot of audiobooks are free online!
ReplyDeleteAlso, I can definitely relate to your experience with the dog. Sometimes (a lot of times), especially when I’m super tired, I look at my dog and tell him how lucky he is that he doesn’t have a worry in the world. But it’s a pretty unfair comparison.
It’s definitely motivating to see my parents work so hard. Like yours, my parents are constantly striving for success, and that fuels me to want to succeed too. I’m so grateful that we’re still young and have the opportunity to try and fail, especially because that opportunity won’t be available forever.
I can also sort of relate to your desire for feeling free. I too chase this feeling, and love going on drives. Driving grants me that freedom and peace that you’re describing, and I’m sure the fresh air and music doesn’t hurt either. When I feel overwhelmed, I like to step outside for a while so I don’t suffocate myself. Maybe you should try to find something that can grant you that feeling when you feel stressed, too.
I think in some way many share your same sentiment about the monotony of life, and have felt life is meaningless as the same motions repeat endlessly, but everyday can be different in its own way. While everyday may be the same on the surface, the conversations you hold, the lessons you learn, the actions you take everyday all differ in their own way.
ReplyDeleteSchoolwork truly can seem like a useless assignment, and I do relate to your statements questioning how reading chapters can help one when entering the workforce, but I feel that the importance of schoolwork does not truly lie in the work itself, more so in the actions. The schoolwork to me feels like a way to get students used to dealing with a workload, teaching them how to manage several different assignments at once and to understand prioritization.
Your statement about the need to stand out to maintain mediocrity seems like quite the contradiction. Typically, those who stand out are anything but mediocre, but I wonder if you are trying to subtly hint about college and its struggles. One must stand out to get into a good college, and getting into a good college secures one a path to a stable, if not grand, future.
Hi Abraham I feel like every week you write such a relatable blog. The way you described stories as “beautiful idyllic worlds” really spoke to me. The perfect ideals and morals that are presented with the story arcs of characters that always end in happiness and even a sad ending or a cliff hanger still manage to leave the audience with some ease that there is hope. I hate it. I don’t know if it is the hyper competitive bay area or something else, but the pressures placed on teenagers here to go to college, to get a job (STEM careers for asian children), and be successful all in one fell swoop without messing up is a lot of pressure. It’s shifted from just familial pressure or the pressure of necessity to society’s pressure. Society has reached a point where they have forgotten mistakes are okay and even necessary to grow and evolve. Global politics is slowly deteriorating and if we zoom into American politics it is clear that the country is in shambles. Not only is our President absurd, but the future of our leadership is just one big question mark. The Democrats and liberals have no one to steady the ship and republicans are getting more and more radical by the day. I think realizing that the world is such an imperfect place and finding our way is probably the hardest part is the most important step in growing as people. Nothing good comes easy and it wouldn’t be fun that way because achieving something that took hard work and reflecting on that in hindsight brings about an incomparable feeling of pride within oneself. The same way you find comfort and solace in books and the dogs your mom pet sits, I find in movies and kdramas. I know that I’ll never achieve that level, but I think there is some comfort in envy.
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