I Spent a Day Staring at the Ceiling

It was one Tuesday morning that I woke up with a startling idea. I decided to do absolutely nothing that day to see whether I would go mad.

From an intense workaholic’s perspective, the idea of being a passive vegetable is as unthinkable as an acrophobic bungee jumping. But in the name of science, I decided to take part in it anyway.

With the utmost determination defeating that of a student cramming for tomorrow’s exam, I anchored myself on the exact same sofa for eight hours straight with no book, no work, and no electronics by my side.

Only bathroom breaks were allowed during that period, and I did not talk to anyone. My hypothesis that I would go mad was sorely mistaken, and contrary to madness, I saw enlightenment.

With the busyness of modern life — an intensity akin to a production line supervisor breathing down your neck — it is easy to take a few precious things in life for granted.

Here are the things that caught my attention that I otherwise would have missed when my mind is occupied — in other words, what I’ve learned staring at the ceiling for the whole day:

Your perception of time changes.

Time passes slowly when you experience it, but when you look back at how you spent the day — looking from the future to the past — it feels like only a split second has passed because nothing of significance occurred.

Yet when you take a step back, it becomes vividly apparent to you how much time you really have in the world. Most of the time, when someone says that they are “busy”, they are not really telling the whole truth.

It is not that they do not have enough time in their day to take on another priority. Instead, it is just a more socially respectable way of admitting, “I cannot take more for the day — I haven’t learned how to use my time more effectively.”

On the other hand, taking a step back also teaches us how little time we have — in relation to the preciousness of the commodity.

There is a story about a business professor:

One day, the professor brought a glass vase in class and filled it with pebbles to the brim. He then asked the students, “Is this vase full?”

The students answered, “Yes!”

The professor then proceeded to fill the vase with sand. He asked, “Is this vase full?”

Knowing their professor — expecting that he has a trick up his sleeve — the students answered, “No!”

They were right. The professor proceeded to pour water into the vase — and only now was it completely full.

He then asked them again, “Students, what was the lesson that should be taken from this demonstration?”

A clever audience member raised their hand and proposed, “Whenever we think our time is full, there is always something we can use to fill in the gaps?”

The professor laughed and replied, “Nice guess. But what I really intended to show was that you could only fit in the big priorities when you include those first, and the smaller priorities can follow. Had I poured in the sand first before the pebbles or the water before the sand, do you think the vase can fit them all without spilling?”

The lesson to take from this analogy — whose significance I could only fully encompass when I emerged myself with the experience of ‘passing time’ in itself without distraction — is that time is a precious commodity which we usually only think of in the background or even not at all.

If we take what is usually in the background up to the center stage — it would be difficult to continue taking it for granted moving forward.

By ridding yourself of distraction and immersing yourself in the reality and nature of time, it will become apparent to us time’s essence and how to best make use of it.

You realize you are alive.

You are more aware of the present, the physical sensations of your leg touching the sofa, how surfaces feel against your skin, your breathing — most importantly, your existence. Most of us spend our day in a trance, on autopilot, unable to truly live with joie de vivre.

Maybe you do not feel happy because you do not have this or that thing you have always been desiring for. You expect that thing to give your life once you have it, forgetting that you are always able to live now! All you have to do is be aware of your surroundings.

We spend most of our waking hours reminiscing about the past, which is no longer within our sphere of influence. Or we dream about the future — in which fate always finds a way to change the course of things in highly unpredictable ways.

The only thing you have is now.

You are forced to engage with the pain.

We usually distract ourselves from the hard questions in life, such as what we really want to do with our lives for the next ten years. Most of us just do immediate tasks with short-term rewards but never think about the long-term goals to define our life.

By taking a step back to pause all distracting activities, we are blessed with the chance to have no other choice but to confront it. Do not simply focus on doing things for short-term rewards. Instead, identify your priorities that define the principles in which you live your life going forward — this will give long-term satisfaction.

We usually waste opportunities to live life with distraction solely aimed to take away our present pain. Getting into a mindless state serves to hide us from anxiety that results from facing up to the fact that life is hard.

There are moments in which even waking up from bed seems like the most impossible thing in the world, attending class requires immense energy, and talking to people is as scary as climbing Mount Everest.

Yet life must go on — we must continue to forge our paths nonetheless, and the world seems coldly uncaring to our woes. Everybody else seems to be doing perfectly fine with their life, almost as all their achievements are done on autopilot; their happiness derived from mindless abandon.

The first step to acknowledging the reality of life is to step aside from the ever more present temptation of running away from the fact of being alive by drowning ourselves in escapism.

Why dig your head in a depressing newspaper when if you look up, you can see the view outside your window — blessed with nature’s gifts before your very eyes?

When we distract ourselves, we are getting rid of the pain — but also the blessings.

Conclusion

A day staring at the ceiling taught me these important lessons:

1. Time is subjective. Take a step back from distractions, and you would see time slowing down. You realize how much time you really have if you use it effectively. On the other hand, you are also faced with the fact that time passes like commodities spent — learn how to put big priorities first before small ones.
2. You are alive. Live in the moment instead of being stuck in the past or in the future — or even in mindless escapism. Sink into the reality that the people around you are just like you. They are not actors playing in the play of your life’s background but main characters of their own. This makes your personal struggles more commonly shared instead of depressingly unique.
3. You face up to the pain — and discover your priorities. Complete tranquility and silence have their way of telling your heart to wander in whichever direction it wishes. You would find yourself gravitating to the same notions over and over again. Look deeply, for this shines a light on what matters to you in the long term.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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