It's all about balance

My friend, Jetro, stumbled upon this story. Happy reading! :)

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous “yes.” The professor then produced two cans of beer from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

“Now,” said the professor, as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognise that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things–your family, your children, your health, your friends, your favourite passions–things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. “The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, your car. The sand is everything else–the small stuff.

“If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical check-ups. Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house, and fix the disposal.

“Take care of the golf balls first, the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.”

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the beer represented. The professor smiled. “I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of beers.”

Delta

A few days ago, I changed my Twitter username from wordsforthegods to tinmilitante. Today I changed my blog URL here in Blogger... from wordsforthegods to justwritetin. For quite a while wordsforthegods was the standard username I used in social networks, but even before that I used several different ones. People say I usually pick odd usernames, yet there's a story behind each of them (I won't go into specifics).

If there's one person who loves the idea of change, that's me. I change my hairstyle, my wallpaper, my nail polish, my mobile phone, my hobbies, my anything when I feel like it. Once I was too detached from the world. Recently I re-learned to commit. It is for that reason, I believe, that I am gradually settling down to (hopefully) permanent choices.

Hmmm... let's see.

(Despite saying in my previous post that I did not like writing enough, I decided to continue blogging. Right now I am still uncertain about what I want to do with my love for it. What I am sure about is that I do not want to let it go completely.)

So... I'm back

Hello there. After two months of being on a writing hiatus, I am here again. I stopped partly because I got busy running around town and abroad, but mainly because I realized I am not into writing as much as I believed I was, or perhaps, I had writer's block. Either way, I did not like it enough to continue writing. Honestly, this realization shocks me, considering that I have always claimed and believed that writing is/was my passion.

I quit the literary org I was in, not because I disliked the people there or any of that sort (in fact, they're amazing, brilliant individuals). I quit because I just felt that it wasn't for me, after all. I really wanted it to be the group I would belong to and associate myself to, but it just didn't flow that way. Something inside me tells me that I should be somewhere else. Where is that somewhere else? I'm not sure yet.

I have been discussing matters about life with my cousin, and we have come to a conclusion that the hardest thing about life is that there is no hard and fast rule; there is no standard formula we can all just follow. There are no guarantees, and there will always be risks. So how to deal? Well, I guess... we should all just keep trying. What if we fail? Then we can laugh about it in the future (by then we are wiser).