you can fear the future of you can embrace it. you can exercise or procrastinate, create reasons why it does not fit to your schedule. you can be happy now or you can be happy later, both is difficult. life is a trade off of things. there is no such thing as a one-sided mountain so be up to pay off the other side. work hard, save and your future might leave you better off. brush your teeth, floss and your teeth should stay with you longer then if you completely ignore them. study, be diligent and keep at things and you will push through them. keep at something long enough and the pay off will come. try to keep at things that you enjoy and the pay off does not matter so much.

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in the chinese countryside, i see the farmers smile when they catch a glimpse of me. not sure if it is my white-skin or my height that brings them happiness, but with crooked teeth and little shame, they smile from ear to ear. its real happiness. perhaps its temporary. but it is real. in the city, i rarely come across that sort of happiness. i rarely see people smile so strongly, unless they are in a social situation and alcohol is making them feel lighthearted. perhaps it is the ignorance. over and over i read that ignorance is bliss, and when i see those smiles i am starting to believe it. to not know better. to have less of the worlds news on our mind. to care for the crops and react to the weather. it is not a simple life, and the struggle to yield food from the land is anything but easy, but the smiling seems genuine none the less.

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time is an unusual thing that we are constantly figuring out how much we want and what to do with it. do we want more or less of it? is it good if we have no time or too much time? if we are waiting in line, stuck in the office or in pain, we want it to move as quick as possible. in pleasure, during a great movie or book or having a nice meal, we want it to go on forever. as a child, we want it to hurry up, to get to an older age where we can act independently and gain the keys to adulthood. once we are older, we yearn for it to go backwards, to feel like we did as a child and can simply pretend it is not going to end. it is finite but at the same time it seems to last forever if you really notice it. hold your breath and count and time will move as slow as you want it. fall asleep when exhausted and it slips away un-noticed. growing older, i have grasped why it moves faster as we age. it is simply that the proportion of time related to the amount of time we are on this planet keeps growing, so 1/3650 of a day (when we are ten years old) and 1/14,350th (when you are in your 40s) of a day is much shorter in proportion.