Tidal Waves

I wonder how the Moon feels, always facing the Earth, never able to look away.

There are days when I feel as though the forces at play in life are ready to tear me asunder. Obligations at school mean I have to be at this place, at this time, doing a certain thing. Work demands an entirely different set of devotion, being at a desk staring into a screen and grinding on a programmatic problem. Projects, social demand, all of it, pulling at me to be at different places at different times.

Each celestial body in the solar system of our lives exerts its certain gravity upon us: sometimes, when our orbits are far apart, that influence is weak, allowing us more control of the moments of our lives. Other times, the grip these major external forces have on us is crushing, dictating the lock-step of what we do with our days.

And then there is us. Because despite sharing the orbit of massive external factors, we also have our own internal influences to pay heed to. At a basic level of course, this dictates the schedule of the day: when we sleep, when we get hungry, and of course, other rhythms our bodies demand upon us. But at a much higher level, our minds, our souls, often have much to say about what we want to be doing during a given day, or week, or month, or year. It’s why everyday around two in the afternoon I have an intense urge to put everything down that I’m working on and go outside and run, yet when I finally have time in the evening, my mind instead has moved on to other things. It’s why I have the curious urge to program from 10p–2a every night, rather than sleep. And it’s why writing has to be either the very first thing Ido in the morning, or the very last thing I do at night.

In a right world, in a just world, in a world where the tides responded to our whims, we could be the master of our own schedules, set our day to the quirks of our own clocks, and be productive in our own manner. But it isn’t feasible for us to do heads-down project work for our jobs at two in the morning, or put a hold on afternoon meetings to work out for an hour.

We are mostly beholden to the external schedules that are placed upon us. How do we make the most of it then? Do we try our best to adjust our own patterns? Do we except that the times we are demanded upon the most may not represent our best work? Do we take advantage of the times when we are on our best?

I really wish I knew.