I am a person who was never disciplined and I had my own theory to it.
Here it is..
Discipline was always seen by me as a concept against freedom. Discipline cuts all forms of freedom into pieces. You need to stop this and do that, stop that and do something else and so on. Some say discipline is something that stops you from being yourself. (I can go on and on but I guess I have made the point of view clear, so I move on)
This conflict in me was more when it is a weekend as weekdays has a structure of its own and hence an unconscious discipline of its own. But the weekend in which I had ample amount of time to kill as there was ('is' applies well too) no plan in mind (all in the name of freedom). Any plan being made or proposed by others (forget others, even strict rules laid by me) gets squandered away by some unknown but very forceful thought with in (No, I wont call it Laziness).
During weekends I don't do much. Some part of my time will go in chatting with friends, call parents and relatives back in India, playing cricket (not now, unfortunately). This I would call the most easily spent time of my weekend without any incompletion or resistance. However, the rest of the day I do not do much except aimlessly surf the net, see some crap videos and just kill the time. When doing these seemingly valueless but time passing activity don't bring any pain but at the end of each exercise there will be a feeling of incompleteness which crops up and grows. But we all know mind gets habituated to what it does over and over. So I was habituated to this way of spending weekends, I like(d) it or not. And the meaning of the word freedom the way I used earlier in this article was may be a trick of my mind. May be it never wanted/want me to do anything new which will in turn discomfort it. Like planning something new or doing more stuff.
This week was yet another such weekend. when there was a plan in place put by others I declined it. So with no plans for rest of the 2 days I was really free to do anything I wanted which I think I did so to a great extent. However similar to my past weekends, after the end of 2 days I felt incomplete. I was clueless, and wondered why? But I just thought on this incompleteness for a while. However, There was such a level of discomfort I cannot describe. It seems to stem from lack action according to a plan for the weekend. The river will not be in the state of rest till it reaches the sea. Mind was no different. It performs better when there is a well defined end point in view and also satisfaction is that much more as well. The conclusion was evident that only way out of this incomplete rest or aimless action is to be in another type of action, a planned action, a disciplined action. But the mind had a valid justification not to be Disciplined, so how can I contrdict my own theory?
However there was another rational thought that came up with a view where I saw discipline in a completely different shade altogether. There was a great shift in this view to that of the previous. I was able to see discipline leading me to freedom I was/am craving for.
How? read on..
Discipline is nothing but having a plan in place and doing it religiously. So there will some task X planned for time T1 and task Y for time T2. I am expected to do these as planned. As usual there will be numerous things cropping up to obstruct this plan. It can be an inviting sleep, an interesting movie, a cricket match, an outing or something else. But all these distracting thoughts are driving me towards the same old way of living, which is doing nothing and at the end feel completely incomplete. But I think what one can get being disciplined is detachment. In a disciplined action I cannot hold on to a task just because I like it or resist another for the reason of not liking it (and justify the same actions in the name of freedom). I need to move on to the next planned action according to the plan there by detaching myself from the attached comforting action. Thus this very discipline which I was against gives me the Freedom I was after..
