aDrenais' Book of Shadows

I've been a bloody ingrate, sending e-mails to family and friends less frequently after Daddy took the trouble to bring my laptop to Abu Dhabi. My theory is that convenience begets complacency, a false sense of being on top of things, so that I end up thinking I don't have to rush to write my updates since I can do it anytime. This can be contrasted to the period when I didn't have my laptop, and had to split my e-mail writing into half-hour blocks because I didn't want to hog the terminals, and still managed to send lengthy e-mails with greater frequency. Of course, this is compounded by the fact that having Internet access allows hours of aimless surfing, an evil distraction to serious e-mail writing. Just like how we lead our lives!

When something or somebody is around all the time, we take it for granted that we don't have to address the issue rightaway, a false sense of security that the thing or person will always be around for us to handle at our leisure. Yet, when we remove this luxury of the person's or object's presence, we often find that we max out our potential when we function, achieving greater efficiency. The false sense of security is what's in the way of spending more time at home with our parents, reading that book that we always wanted to read, and doing that course we've been meaning to do for the longest time. Because they'll always be there.

The idea, of course, is to start living life with a greater awareness of what's important to us, instead of being lulled into the false sense of security. It's well and good when the absence prompts improved performance, but in the same thread, parents will not live forever, friends will not hang around if we don't make an effort to keep them, and before we know it, life will pass us by.