THE RATRACE
I finished college in 2005, and just a month after graduation I joined the rat race as I worked right away. So far I’ve worked for 3 companies. And each time I moved from one company to another, I made sure I was never out of work for more than a week. I was happy with my last job as a segment producer for a TV network. I was able to travel often, meet different people, and experience how to fend for myself. As my savings grew in the bank, I felt more and more like an adult. I was proud of myself for having done well in the real world.
Until I decided to pick up my paint brush and attempted to paint on a blank canvas.
I was able to produce this…
Pretty, isn’t it? I got praises for it from my family and friends who saw it. Even 'YOU' perhaps are thinking that it is such a great picture. But I have been drawing this painting for 5 years already and I couldn’t come up with anything else but this sun… which is why despite the praises I got out of it, I felt bad...I felt stuck.
MY BRAIN WENT AWOL…
It’s true what they say when you are successful “something’s got to give”. Just when my career was taking off,I was used to my everyday routine…It hit me...My job ruled my life… other things that I loved had to take the back seat...Such as sports, family time, my friends, reading a book, and my first love painting...in short all I did was work. So when my brain couldn’t even come up with a simple ‘unique’ artwork during my free time, I knew something was wrong. I forgot how to come up with new creative ideas. It was frustrated, I was on a creativity brain rut. I started to wonder, what was causing this brain freeze? was it because I was getting older? Was my brain stagnating? Was it going awol on me?
Before I went totally crazy, I decided to take a break from my everyday routine and I went on a month long trip away from it all. I needed to re-charge my brain, resuscitate my life.
TONSAI, KRABI THAILAND
I spent more than a month in Tonsai. Everyday spent in the island was a unique experience for me. Everything that surrounded me was anything but familiar. I did so many things I have never done before such as try to speak Thai (even if I sound like a dying chicken), I learned how to love spicy food without having water, I avoided using the phone, the internet and there was no TV…all I did was read a book or play different board games. I also challenged myself by doing harder climbing routes that I never thought I could do, and I made friends with people from everywhere…even from places I didn’t know where to locate in the world map such as ‘New Caledonia’. I created a whole new routine for myself, which was to have ‘no routine’ at all.
I’M ALIVE AGAIN
When I came back from that month long trip, I realized that all I needed to shake my static life and make drastic changes in order for me to feel alive again. I wanted to break free from my old life, and to feel alive again. My Thailand trip was followed by another big change... I filed an indefinite leave from my company and resigned from my documentary show. I also applied for graduate studies in the Ateneo and luckily I got in and now I am braving the walls of my once rival school. Armed with nothing but my meager savings and a clear mind hungry for new experiences. I started to live my new life. A few months after I made these drastic changes, I picked up my old sketchpad and pen, and started drawing again…and this time I drew different images, goodbye sunshine!!!
(PERHAPS THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS A QUARTER LIFE AFTER ALL?)
This experience is probably why Roderick Gilkey and Clint Kilts consider developing one’s cognitive fitness important. Gilkey and Kilt’s believed that novel experiences stimulate ones brain to generate knowledge. Perhaps, I was too immersed with my routine-like life, which made it difficult for me to extract new ideas from my brain. It wasn't at all because I was getting old. It was because I got sucked into the system and forgot to live a little, let my brain play a little. Having learned the concept of Cognitive Fitness, I can't help but wonder could there be no such thing as a quarter life crisis after all?and only a lack of cognitive fitness?
(NEW LIFE)
The idea of cognitive fitness enlightened me about how I will take on this new chapter of my life. I think Gilkey and Kilt’s ideas on how one can develop and enhance our cognitive fitness are good tips for us adults. As we age we become too fixated with work, and we forget that we could also work hard at play. We settle for routines, and we forget to expand our way of thinking and acknowledge other mindsets. After reading about cognitive fitness, I realized that perhaps the answer to my brain shutting-off was something that even a kindergarten knows…After all, all I needed was to play, to explore and to experience things in order to break my brain's dry-spell.
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