Up time

If you are not into computer science, running a blog or working as an engineer it is unlikely you used this term often. Generally it is a preserved word for systems. Like an internet server which has to be operational all around the clock. 24/7/365. Uptime is the percentage of time the system is up and running.

Gear System

My experience on Uptime

Like the other day suddenly the magical mindful living blog was not working. I was upset that I made a critical error during editing the blog. I even reseted the blog to previous version. Yet it didn't resolve the problem. Hence I checked the hosting site, when I knew there was a major malfunction in servers and the team were busy running the tests to fixed it. So I had digged a bit about this process of uptime. Apparently these system crashes are not something rare. It happens several times per year. Mostly minor ones which affects part of the system. Major  downtimes occur making entire system malfunctions. Yet these are uncommon. But more catastrophic and worrisome. Infact uptime is a good indicator of functions of such a system. Let's dig a little more deep into this concept.

Amazon servers Uptime

Imagine Amazon servers stopped for 24 hours. With millions of parcels moving around the world will be halted and it would be a disastrous. Even everything moved perfectly after the crash the cost of operational losses would be in billions. So the uptime for such a system is utmost important. Now, let's move away from computer science and find out what we can do with the principle of uptime.

Amazon servers

Uptime of society

Let's look at the society. What is uptime for a society? We can say a normal day in any country is uptime. Things move in shipyards, on roads, in offices. Factories run and retail shops are open. Once in a while there would be crashes in the system. A flood, a landslide or  a storm would make the part of the system dysfunctional, like a minor crash. But rarely something major would happen. A war, a riot or a political instability will make everything go crashing. This happened during covid. We were forced to take risks in getting covid as systems were about to crash, as longer we kept them shut down. However, as there were plenty of stored values we survived. Somebody was aware of the downtime!

Personnal uptime

Just like the society, we can consider an uptime of a person, over a period of time. You may wake up in the morning and go to bed at night. That can be considered uptime for an individual. Yet humans do not function like computers. The quality of the uptime depends on the quality of the consciousness, and thoughts. More importantly the awareness. For a person the time that he or she was is aware during a period of time is a good candidate for the uptime.

This is why there is a saying "if you're aware you're not there, no point of being there".

Natural awareness

It's rarther OK to sleep if you're too tired to be awake and be aware. On the other hand even during painful unpleasant experiences if your system is up and running, being aware of the experience, it is good. As these so called negative experiences can really change the way you look at the world. Even depression can be a blessing for your future endeavours once you recover if you were aware of what was going on.

Here, I do not discuss how to improve awareness. There are not  a lot of ways, other than letting yourself be in positions where awareness is at its best. Early morning, after a rest and when you are in the nature taking a walk or just observing. If they are not possible sitting on a chair doing nothing would bring back your awareness from wherever its hiding. Because in life it seem no destination. Its just a journey. So the happiness you seek if not coming from current experience there is no use in searching it tomorrow!