increasingly i'm starting to realise how difficult it is to engage with the content around me. content is everywhere. and we’re told we’re ‘consumers’ of it.
but i beg to differ.
not a novel idea – but how often are we actually thinking about what it is we’re trying to learn? how often are we engaging with it? why are we trying to consume it in the first place?
philosophy has been more and more interesting to me because of this exact reason: i want to understand why certain things happen. why is it that it’s so incredibly difficult for me to just slip into a routine?
a concrete example: something as simple as brushing my teeth. nowadays i feel an actual urge to do it twice a day. if i don’t, i don’t feel good. but it wasn’t always like that. i vividly remember lying to my parents about brushing my teeth before bed – i’d think, ‘ugh why should i bother, i’m already in bed’. but over time, that clearly changed.
and i want to point out something kind of crucial in that journey: i started going to boarding school.
what’s special about boarding school is you’re living with other people – living. we had to do almost everything at the same time: waking up, eating, studying, playing, exercising, sleeping – the list goes on. for the 5 years i was there, i learned really quickly how to tie a tie, the usual time to shower, how often to brush my teeth – it all became second nature. why? because everyone around me was doing it.
and that’s the part i keep coming back to: you are literally the product of your environment.
sure, it’s not a revolutionary story, but it still feels important to present-day me. right now, it feels like i’m pushing a truck up a hill alone. maybe i could move it bit by bit to the top, but god would that take forever – and it’d be so frustrating.
maybe the better route is finding that environment where everyone is pushing the truck with you.
like many others, i have an endless list of things i want to do:
- read more
- write more
- express myself creatively
- etc.
but it’s hard to find the time. and even harder to find the motivation. falling out of the “streak-loop” can be heartbreaking (that’s why snapchat streaks work) and, for me at least, pretty demotivating. i guess the way out is finding the right people to keep you in the loop.