“May I be better today that I was yesterday”
Most of us have heard a version of the instructive parable of the rocks, pebbles, and sand. In this parable, an instructor in a classroom setting takes a jar and fills it to the brim with sizable rocks.
He then asks whether the jar is full to which the students answer in the affirmative.
He proceeds to put smaller pebbles in this jar. The pebbles settle in the spaces between the rocks all the way to the top of the jar. He again asks whether the jar is full, to which the students once again answer in the affirmative.
He then pours sand in the jar. The sand fills the spaces between the pebbles. He asks again whether the jar is full to which the students once again, albeit tentatively now, answer in the affirmative.
He finally pours water into the jar and the water fills the spaces between the granules of sand making a muddy mess.
The moral of this story is that one should prioritize the important things first and sweat the small stuff less. If one makes the small stuff the most important, they will have mostly sand and water in their lives. Aside from this being a muddy mess, it also may mean that there is not enough space in their jar of life, to put in the more important things.
Most of us spend our time in these proportions: 7 – 8 hours sleeping, 7-9 hours working, and 6 – 7 hours at leisure. We do not apportion this time deliberately or consciously – we somehow stumble from event to event, bumbling along never really questioning how or why we spend our time as we do.
After a very long time of this way of living, we find ourselves completely out of kilter. We know deep inside that there is an imbalance in our lives which we are unable to pinpoint. We find ourselves, anxious, stressed, resentful, unhappy, and in some cases angry and depressed.
These feelings get magnified in our middle age (typically close to and above 40). In some cases, we find that by the usual metrics of success, we have achieved said success, yet there is a hollowness deep inside that this success doesn’t seem to be able to fill. This niggling feeling that there is more than just being rich prompted me to question and actively seek answers to what I wanted for myself.
I started journaling in my late teens – seeking to assuage the angst I was feeling. It took a while to understand what I wanted for myself. When I went to America to study, I had the time to be outside of my typical circumstance and I really poured myself into trying to understand what my requirements were. I had realized that I was not religious by the time I was 12. I was in Catholic school and the nuns were some of the cruelest and unhappy people I had ever met. I knew then that being religious didn’t guarantee happiness.
I also did not come from wealth – as a matter of fact, I came from what could be classically be defined as poverty. I didn’t feel poor. I was happy. I was surrounded by family and I never missed a meal. I had shelter and clothes that suited whichever season of the year it was. I had books. My mother brought me encyclopedias about all kinds of random things. My world was full of interesting mindscapes that the contents of these books and encyclopedias helped me conjure.
If all else failed – there was the Bible, a very large book, full of REALLY interesting stories about faraway lands, magical people, creatures, and stories of God. I also discovered passages in the Songs of Solomon that were erotic – once again, inspiring the imagination of a young man to no end.
I wrote and rewrote about my perceptions of the world, morphing my perspective as I learned more and as my Mental Models of the world improved.
This blog and the supporting audiovisual materials are intended to lay bare what almost 3 decades of pondering have yielded. I do not claim for these ponderings to be ‘gospel truth’ but rather musings of a person in their mid-life, who is still searching for “The One Thing – a Unified Theory of How all of life works”.
The structure of my life rests upon three big rocks: Wisdom, Health, and Prosperity. The supporting pebbles are Spirituality, Mental Lattices, Physical Health, Intimate Love, Family Love, Career, Wealth, Authenticity (Mindfulness), Honesty and Alignment (Fulfilment). The sand and the water are the activities that I perform in service of the rocks and the pebbles.
Thank you for reading this far and indulging in my maiden post on balance.
Join me for the next post as I unpack the geology of life as I see it.
