"It is important that you get clear for yourself that your only
access
to impacting life is
action.
The world
does not care what you intend, how committed you are, how you feel, or
what you think, and certainly it has no interest in what you want and
don't want. Take a look at life as it is lived and see for yourself
that
the world
only moves for you when you
act."
...
"It's not fair: my parents had
sex,
and now I have to go to work."
I've
discovered
something: the snooze button on my digital alarm clock doesn't
work.
The day I finally realized it doesn't
work
(and by "doesn't
work"
I mean it doesn't facilitate snoozing's desired result) was a
big
day for me, a pivotal day. On that day, I got something life-altering,
something life-expanding. On that day, I got something I'd hovered over
for years yet never fully grasped. Everything changed for me that day,
everything in terms of what's possible.
When I say the snooze button on my digital alarm clock doesn't
facilitate snoozing's desired result, I'm not referring to the sounds
of the chimes. They
work
just fine. What I'm referring to is when my alarm's chimes went off
before sunrise,
waking me up
with the somehow eerie preloaded "Life's Good" Android alarm tone,
there was an already grumpy complaint in my head already muttering
"It's too soon", "I don't wanna get up", "I need more
sleep",
hana hana.
So I'd hit the snooze button, roll over, fluff the pillows a bit and,
mumbling something as equally inconsequential as it was incoherent,
close my eyes again. But then when the alarm chimed again ten minutes
later, I again
woke up
into "It's too soon", "I don't wanna get up", "I need more
sleep.".
The extra ten minutes did nothing to dissipate any of that
cacophony for me, the anticipated
efficacy
of the snooze button notwithstanding. So I hit the snooze button again
... and ten minutes later, the chimes
waking me up
again underscored the grumpy complaint still going on, blathering away.
I call that the "condition".
Extra ten minutes of snoozings just don't
work.
I've proved it countless times. The
anticipatedefficacy
of the snooze button just ... plain ... doesn't ...
work.
It's always too soon. It's always I never wanna get up. It's always I
need more
sleep.
Like a fish
wakes up
into
water,
that's just the condition I
wake up
into (in all likelihood I'm not the only one, but I'll leave
that for you to deny or confirm). A good day yesterday, six hours of
sleep
or more, and even one or more extra ten minutes snoozings doesn't
change it. It's just a condition we
wake up
into. And there doesn't seem to be a damned thing we can do about it.
But there is something I've
discovered
which is profoundly
simple
in managing this condition ... and it
works
too. I'd actually proved it unwittingly time and again before but I
begrudged it (silly me). I kind of didn't believe it at
first - as risky and as foolish as it is to ignore the obvious. But
ignore it I did. What I ignored was this: what
works
is getting up when I
wake up,
then getting into
action
when I get up regardless of the cacophonic noise in my
head saying "It's too soon", "I don't wanna get up", "I need more
sleep.".
No matter how many times I've hit the snooze button, the condition I
wake up
into remained the same. I've proved it - time and again. I just didn't
fully get it. My truculence was slow on the uptake. But thank
God
it doesn't stay
stoopid
for too long.
The grumpy complaint / the cacophony is just the condition we
wake up
into. What
works
isn't snoozing. What
works
is getting up and getting into
action.
And when I do, that grumpy complaint, the cacophonic noise in my head /
the condition I
woke up
into? It's
not-so-mysteriouslygone quiet.
And the quality of the condition I'm now operating in having
woken up
and gotten up, and gotten into
action
without resorting to the snooze button, has now got nothing to do with
/ is discontiguous from the condition I
woke up
into. It's a total revelation, a timely one (no pun intended - digital
alarms' chimes notwithstanding).
