by Christa Visperas

Created on: August 27, 2009

Reflection of any kind, for me, is a precious commodity these days. It seems my life has turned into one streaking blur of linearity from the moment I wake up, go to work, go home, and sleep. With only a few hours of sleep daily because of the demands of husband, children, career, parents, and god-knows-who-else, the only time I pause for self reflection is to listen to that voice in my head saying: "You'd get sick if you keep this up much longer." And most of the time, my reaction is one of fear, and seconds later the fear is lost as I ignore the voice, forget it altogether, because, you see, I'm off again to pick up the pace of my hurried linear life.

I miss the old days when I could curl up in a chair and watch the rain falling outside, or lie down on a patch of grass and gaze at the clouds in the sky (yes, I actually did that for a hobby when I was younger). I loved to stay in a quiet coffee shop for hours on end, watching people pass by and willing to be left behind. I miss those days when my life was not a blur of daily routine, when 24 hours didn't speed by as if they're only 10, and unpredictable events provided crossroads left and right for me to take. Those days when I could still catch my breath and conduct periodic self reflection of where I was, how I was doing with my life, and talked to God and myself about how great or how poorly I was doing so far along the way.

I know self reflection is good for my spirit. Too much of it actually caused this gift of writing to flourish in me. Writing became an outlet for the flood of thoughts I can barely contain in my moments of reverie.

Self reflection freed me to bare my soul for myself to criticize, ridicule, laugh at, and even jeer. I was my own worst critic, brutally honest and unforgivingly frank. I had no illusions of greatness because of the constant honest evaluation of myself, and the taskmaster within me spurred me to doing better, becoming better and achieving more as time went by.

Self reflection made me feel the deepest sense of humanity. It had developed a deep empathy in me for others. I took "jumping to conclusion" to the grandest level. I felt grief, pain, joy, love, and all human emotions, just by reading the newspaper or conjuring stories in my mind. A simple one-line statement about a couple's separation would turn into an epic novel in my head, examining whose fault was it, and the consequences of their separation. Simple gossip ended up with me feeling terribly sorry for the children.

These days, the time for self reflection is nearly gone. I am a mass of action, not a creature of self reflection. These days, I take "busy" to the grandest scale, to my unending regret. One outlet remains, though, and it is to write. Against great time constraint, fighting tiredness, sleeplessness, and weariness, and struggling against the overpowering tendency to think about the bills, I write as often and as mightily as I can.

It is cathartic, and I feel close to what prisoners feel when visited by their relatives in prison - nearly human - if only for a while.

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