Discipline

Discipline curbs imagination, that’s what I would have imagined many would claim. After all, we know in our minds that discipline is more often than not, a party-pooper. But if you had your way without discipline, what would it be like? I see it as a rampant outbreak of chaos and messiness, devoid of any form of uniformity or conformity. Right and wrong becomes subjective, depending on whose side you’re on.

Why is it so important for us to seek clarity of right and wrong? For those who are parenting (a lot of my friends are either pregnant or have newborns), I empathize with their enormous responsibility of moulding the child’s social and moral character. I have known (and seen) the cruel fate of children resulting in ignorant parenting, the amount of damage done to them from ill-fitting discipline and years later, those kids need to undo in them what was wrongly taught. Yet, we understand perfectly the need for children to be disciplined because they have yet the ability to make sensible decisions of their own.

Perhaps it is seeing the school teenagers on the train to work each morning that highlights to me what the potential of each child, which constantly send shivers within me. To know that any opportune moment would be a threat, a distraction to the lives you have envisioned for them to become. And yet, you do not want them to associate discipline with meted punishment, the way we have learnt from our parents and grandparents.

Discipline is like the necessary evil. To train your mind to focus in a certain manner is no easy feat, especially when it is not your most natural human way of functioning – either with plenty of procrastination or just busying yourself with distractions which does not matter ultimately.

Why then do we impose disciplines upon ourselves and how do we know whose disciplines are right and whose are wrong? For there are so many disciplines offered in the world today and our minds and our time have such a limited capacity to understanding.

The oxymoron of discipline is one where you strive to regiment your life (actions, words, behaviour) to a certain way of governing then you can begin to experience freedom. The Path to Enlightenment? Perhaps that is what many of us do to seek understanding of our worlds, ourselves, our spirits. That in our divulging of discipline forms, we attain this sense of freedom, or entrapment (as some would say), knowing that we have already establish the boundaries of right and wrong in the beginning.

I struggle with disciplines. Especially in my school days, I struggle with studying for exams. My eyes wander everywhere except sticking to the books. I think about what to eat, where to go, what to wear, everything imaginable except studying for that stupid exam. And it is like the mind of a child, who does not want to be bound to a task, hence shirking responsibility and knows that he/she can still get away with it.

It was funny how I learnt to be disciplined in my own life (for a lifetime, I’m sure). It was the gym that got me. Being the typical Asian chick that desires for a slim and fit body, I worked hard with Ree to go to the gym ever so often. And overtime, I’d realized that the going gets easier, and more necessary, irregardless of how I felt that day. Of course, it took me a while, 2 years, to cultivate this form of discipline and then noticing that in other aspects of my life, I desired for discipline and structure too. With it, I can and have achieved much more than my mind can momentarily comprehend, which made me the person I am today.

And yes, it is true, that discipline builds character, and you’ll begin to see what kind of a character you become, because of the type of disciplines you set in place for your own life. That some things are just so fundamentally necessary that you will run out of excuses eventually to avoid learning them. So, if you had a choice, to struggle earlier or later in your life, why not do it now? Today is a good day to start.