Monthly Reflection is a project where I document my learning stuff and life experience last month. The project is aim to hone my English writing skills and track my spiritual status, if you are interest in my life, feel free to subscribe the project. 🎈
Introduction
Intending to take the challenge of No Nut November (NNN) but gave up right away on the second day. I questioned myself that whether I was addicted to masturbation, so I searched the definition of addicted on Webster Merriam.
addicted : strongly inclined to do, use, or indulge in something repeatedly
The definition is so ambiguous that I still lack quantitative indicator to evaluate my level of addiction. Fortunately, after starting formal training of marathon, I have other place to relieve myself, and so dramatically decreased the frequency of masturbation by 50%. Although I would still repeat the activity, the strong emotion subside significantly, so I guess I wasn't addicted to it.
Anyway, there are three issues that I particularly want to share, respectively love, running and family.
- Love
Me and my girlfriend usually have same opinion on most things, and we could both tolerate small differences. However, one day when we were discussing about future plan, I encouraged her to apply for internship or initiate side projects to make her resume more colorful, but my tone seems too demanding and condescending that made her feel like I negated her efforts on schoolwork and ignored her studying pressure. As a result, we spent time defending ourself and failed to form consensus.
The last day I reflected myself to figure out problems behind that discussion. I found out that the problem derived from my eagerness of changing people's mind. To be more specific, I desire to influence people's thought because I want to get sense of satisfaction from it, while not showing my eagerness to avoid being aggressive. Nevertheless, I tend to forget the boundary when I was talking to my close mates. Thanks to the experience, I started being aware of respecting people's differences, and try to use my actions instead of my words to affect people. Even if they don't buy in. At least I have done what I could do.(Similar feeling when I worked as the captain of Basketball Team at BA Department )
2. Running
The cover photo is shot on an event named Hood to Coast, which is an overnight, long-distance relay race originally held in United State, Oregon, and it is also the largest running and walking relay in the world. Our team comprise 5 people with different backgrounds (I only know 2 of other 4 before) , and we would going to run 170 km from Taitung to Hualien.
To run 30–40 km in 24 hours without injury, I have to train relentlessly to catch up the gap. Before the day of event, I have run 140 km in November, and the distance is 30% greater than last month. On the event day, I was the first runner in group K to finish race with the pace of 4:17/ km. Enjoying Taitung's serenity and fresh air, I truly felt myself when I was running, no music interruption, no vehicle pollution, no scorching heat, no pressure from studying and job.
Nevertheless, none of things in real world is perfect. We are all exhaustive after completing the race in 15:44:45, and I was also tired after running for 43 km. I was pondering why I paid $3000 NT dollars to torture myself, but maybe it was an important and colorful chapter which I could write in my autobiography 30 years later.
Lots of people would ask me what's the pleasure of running, and I've spent lots of time finding out the best answer. Right now I would say that running provide me with a sense of satisfaction from self-achievement and solitude. If you are interested in the difference between solitude and loneliness, this article interprets my thought clearly.
3. Family
It is foreseeable that my parents might retire within five years. If I follow my plan of studying abroad for two years and working at United States for at least three years(to make enough money pay for the tuition debt), I would miss the days getting alone with them. In addition, I would have to serve as military for four months before going to US, which means that ideally I would only have maybe twelve months accumulated to share moment with my parents in the next five years. So I especially cherish the moment accompanying with them right now, and it also motivates me to do something special to record our memory.
One day, I found out that if I could encourage my father to run a marathon with me, it would both be beneficial for his health and our relationship. It is admitted that pushing a sixty-year-old guy to run a marathon is pretty hard, surprisingly, he took the challenge! My mother said in a sarcastic tone that he would do anything his son ask him to do. Therefore, we enrolled in a half-way marathon held at January 31st. I set my goal to 4:30/km or 1:35:00/21.1km, and I hope that my father could finish in 2:30:00.
Right now I cherish every moment getting alone with my family, my friends, and my lover. Hope that all of us could live a healthy and satisfying life. Happy Christmas.
