Oops, this should have been posted on the 25th of June...

Guys, this should have been posted on the 25th of June. Please read this before you read the previous post.

What Architect said in his comment on the send/receive post is very true. Gratification plays a very big role in what we choose to do with our time. If you do not like doing something, you are more likely to give up on it. On the other hand, if you find something that you like very much and that is quite easy to do, you will spend more time on it. A lot of times this is a form of instant gratification, a disease of our time. We want everything and we want it NOW! Do yourselves a favor and go read Architects post, it fits in quite well with what I have written so far.

Using gratification as a starting point, let's see why we neglect certain relationships and spend too much time on others. If we take the example of studying, it is very often the case that we do not get instant gratification out of our studies. It is tedious and time-consuming, we spend a lot of time studying and we do not see the results we would like to see. Thus we start doing other things in the times we should be behind the books. Computer games, for instance. Anything that is easier than studying and gives instant gratification. We should try to avoid this. That is why we must encourage ourselves to work at the relationships that will give gratification in the long run! Completing your studies and getting a proper job that you enjoy is gratifying beyond that one instant of euphoria when you realize you have outsmarted you opponent in an online game. (Or so I think...) To me, playing Beethoven will be more gratifying than playing twinkle twinkle little star on my violin, but to get there, I must put in a lot of effort and get to know my violin as well as I know myself, even better than I know myself.

I think that one must prioritize one's relationships. Family and friends must come first in my opinion, then work and then play. In my case, I have put play ahead of all of those way too often. There is no balance in playing all the time, actually all that you are doing is wasting time. Instead of doing something constructive that might give you gratification in the long run, I was just squandering away my time for short lived moments of happiness.

Sorry for jumping around like this guys, I am really trying to write in a way that people can follow the flow of thought, but sometimes (most of the times) a comment triggers something in me and I write about the comment in stead of  what I promised to write about. Maybe I should stop saying what I am going to write about next time? That way you don't get too excited about something that often as not, doesn't happen. And you get a surprise every time. "Now what you got to say about that?!"

I walk through this "tunnel" at least ten times a day. Do we pay attention to the things that we see every day? This is just a walk through under a wooden deck, but if you look at something from a slightly different angle than you normally would, you might see something new every day.