Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

Silence.

Tick. Tock.

Silence.

For ten seconds, drop whatever you are doing including reading this, close your eyes and just breathe. No thoughts. No distractions.

Silence.

I do wonder if you find that silence is comforting or disturbing. I hope it’s the former because it is truly a rarity to appreciate a soundless environment and for a moment in time, it is just you and no one else.

I don’t know about you but I found it really hard to let go of my phone. I still do sometimes. Since the birth of the iOS and Android (sorry Microsoft), we can do anything on our phones. Name it as you will. Texting. Calling. Scheduling. Web browsing. Gaming. Reading. Fitness tracker. Social networking. Pretty much almost everything, and that is scary.

I wrote about this a while back in Apple and the Tree but that was just scratching the surface. It’s not just our phones that caused us to be so busy. It’s the idea of wanting to be busy all the time. When we seem to have a free weekend, we schedule dates, movies and dinners. Even when we are not free, we also do the same. The moment we step foot on the bus or train, we plugged our earphones and get lost in a sea of rhythms and melodies. When we finished work or uni, we go home and watch TV. After watching TV, we go to bed. While lying down, maybe we watch YouTube on our phones, scroll the Reddit channels or simply browse the Web.

It’s almost as if we are afraid of being bored.

I remember the times when I was 16 and 17. My school never allowed students to carry phones. Somehow, my parents (my dad mostly) had a habit of picking me up late. So, when school finished, I will be standing under this tree and wait for my parents. There were no chairs to sit on, so yes, I was standing for almost 1 hour. Of course, sometimes, I will go into this little porch and sit down. If I was worried about my dad, I would have to use one of those public phones and put 50 cents in. Ha. Public phones. Anyway, I was actually fine with waiting and doing nothing. I mean sure, there were girls on the other side of the bridge to look at but hey, they weren’t there all the time.

The funny thing is I can’t imagine doing that today. If I had a smartphone, I would have taken it out of my pocket immediately and start doing something. Anything. Again, that is scary.

I question why am I so afraid of being bored and how did I pick up these habits. I know most readers would think it is fine to constantly want to do something because that just means that no time is wasted. Ask yourself this though, are you really wasting time or you just can’t stand your brain not being stimulated? All of these constant usage and perpetual communications cause our brains to be overstimulated and possibly go into hyper-drive. We never have time to reflect on our day, our actions and our interactions with others. Perhaps, that’s why silence seems like a daunting prospect because as a friend put it, “We are afraid of what we might find out about ourselves when all is still.”

I think that is very true. Our brain is like a pipe. Water keeps flowing through and that’s fine because it shows that it is functioning. However, as we know, dirt and sediments will one day clog it up and burst the pipe if we don’t pause every now and then. Whether it’s an achievement or a mistake, it is good to take a moment in time and think back about the day. It’s the same reason people write diaries.

As we are so used to constant static noise, it would be hard to actually face silence initially but I can assure you, you would find it fruitful when you say, “Today, I’m going to have 30 minutes to myself and nothing else. Come what may but I want to know about my life and what is going on with it.”

In silence, there is always a story to be told from your memories of things and places around you.

You just have to listen for it.

 

 

 

 

 

Trying something new here, I’m going to write  on the fly, not in the plane or writing on an actual fly but writing on my mobile. I feel if I keep procrastinating, I’ll never write anything at this rate.

Anyway, I was quite productive today. I went to take photos with two of my friends who graduated today. Speaking of which, I’m graduating soon! Following that, I caught up with two friends! One of whom I haven’t caught up with properly for one and a half years. She was one of the few engineering friends I still keep in contact with because we could always talk more than engineering. With most of my engineering course mates, we do find ourselves not having topics to talk about because

a) I don’t play League of Legends
b) I don’t watch Australian Football League or cricket or any Aussie sport (I feel there’s a joke I can make here but I rather not thread on)
c) I don’t talk about planes and cars all the time
d) I don’t Steam. That came out wrong but you know what I mean. Hopefully.

So whenever I could find a friend who has the same wavelength as me and could intertwine topics about life together with engineering. It is pretty cool. I think this brings me back to one of the subjects I did in uni. It was Professional Engineering and Communication. In one of the careers talk, they asked us to choose three cards from a deck which suggested what we want to do in our careers. I picked ‘Social Outreach’, ‘Helping Others’ and ‘Research’ if I recalled correctly. Others picked cards like ‘High Productivity’, ‘Inventing Solutions’ and ‘Team Management’. Something along those lines. In other people’s eyes, my cards were considered duds and so they were rarely chosen. They were like, “Why are you in engineering then?” I did not know what to say.

I think people have the opinion sometimes that helping people means becoming a nurse, priest, social worker, counselor and teacher. Quick to form judgement,  reaction can entail, “Oh you’re a teacher, great job girl, you’re going to help students.” or “Oh you’re an engineer, what field are you in and what projects have you been doing?” That’s quite a simplistic and narrow minded view on jobs that some have. It’s almost always either helping people or be a productive and financially capable professional. It’s never a melding of both because of perception that it’s a larger than life concept.

Having just came back from her exchange, my friend was struggling to find meaning in her studies again because she said she doesn’t know if biomedical engineering suits her anymore or rather, she doesn’t know the purpose of her degree anymore. She started her degree with the mindset of wanting to help others but somewhere along the way, maybe she doesn’t quite know if she is able to do that with her current degree and lost the motivation needed.

This is also where I struggle with at times. What is helping others? It’s so easy to spit out those words but honestly, how do you help others?

As I ponder that question, I caught up with another friend who funnily enough, is the epitome of someone always putting others before herself. Being busy with her second degree, college commitments and family  responsibilities, she volunteers to teach mathematics to refugee students two days a week. In my mind, I was thinking you should get paid while doing it. But then that defeats the purpose, purest form of giving is always in giving without expecting anything in return.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s what helping is. It should be second nature to us just as talking is. In any role or job, we focus on the productivity and success aspect of it. This is measured by public recognition, annual salary and life benefits. Practically, that’s perfectly fine. We all need to survive and raise families someday. We all want fashion, gadgets and automobiles.

However, I think helping is not limited by the scope of the job. It may not be quite obvious but anything can aid towards that. I don’t think the cards I chose are duds. They are something everyone including myself should keep in mind. There’s no need for compartmentalisation between selflessness and career. It helps bring a sense of purpose to what we do.

The argument can be made that why should we help others if no one helps us. It brings us back to the truest form of giving. Don’t expect anything in return. We are definitely entitled to want people to treat us well. However as always, “do unto others as you want others to do unto you”.

Simple advice but one we all struggle with but hopefully continue to persevere despite hardships and doubts.