Bathroom breaks and the circle of influence.
Bathroom Breaks.
For the modern man the bathroom is a place for breathing and rest. How pathetic the life has become; we do not find a space in our compact office apartment a place to rest. A silent corner where anyone can sit and relax when they are overwhelmed by work. Do you not wish of such a place? I am sure if there is such a place that would be the favorite of many. Until then the bathroom would continue to provide that function. This is not a false fact even for a home. How many of you would find peace at home? Unless you are living alone and bored, or you live in a Manson so big that there are literally hundreds of empty room chances are still the bathroom is the place that you relax every day. That even makes sense as half an hour of a day inside a bathroom is five years of lifetime inside of it. Mind you when we get older the bathroom time would only proportionally increase.
While sitting in the bathroom, I had thoughts. I could not see beyond the walls of the bathroom. There was no specific thing I had to do, except the bodily function. The weakness of every dictator, serial criminal offender, and even the richest man on earth is that they cannot escape from bodily functions. Unless we find a convenient way of transferring our consciousness into a machine. Perhaps we already are these little machines. Even if that happens, our experience is limited to what is in front of us. If we are not aware of our immediate surroundings and things happening, that is a true waste of time.
Circle of influence.
This gives us a different perspective about our life. What is your circle of influence? That is just your immediate surrounding and what can you do with things at your hand. Even if you can upload a photo to instagram and watch that it getting reactons while you are sleeping, your circle of influence remains what you do inside your room. Essentially your circle of influence become shrunken to your unconcious bodily functions during your sleep. The way you can influence more people is by some form of recording or broadcasting your thoughts, ideas and pictures. However, paradoxically you do not live with them, the actual circle of influence you have is just yourself in front of your camera. Just you and a camera and a microphone. Just you and your journal. Just you and your pots and pan. Just you and your bathroom mirror. It is true our minds take thousands of short journeys into the past and the future during a single day. However our circle of infulence remains small. With tools available to us to reach millions at a time, yet, only interact with few of them.
Apart from being aware, other thing we should be focussing on is taking action. Although our circle of influence is small, Still this is the place where everything happens. Like a tiny drop of water which will eventually collect to form a mighty river, your tiny actions and inactions will accumilate over years, and provide enough evidence to the exisistance of you. As memories and as work. As buildings, paintings and paperwork you have done. The fact is this doesn't need a lot of IQ or even physical exhaustion, if you are wise. If you can just walk around the country collecting strange dried up leaves. Even that might add a value to your experience.
Perhaps, a better quote would be something what Franz Kafka said:
Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. - but you have to be aware of your circle of influence to do that! so mindfulness first.
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