TAR - Tension, Action, Reflection

Don't get me wrong, i'm not preaching smoking, nor am i lecturing biology. I am just immersed in my own world of thinking once again. And so the journey begins..

TAR, in short, or rather in my perception, represents a cyclic process or routine that makes up the micro and macro parts of our life. Our life consists of many TAR processes repeatedly experienced.. Let me cite you an example. You feel the urge to go for this chocolate buffet due to a long craving for chocolate. You decide to halt the hesitation and ignoring your subconscious which keeps remind you of the sin that you are putting yourself through (chocolates!!), you go for it..So after the buffet, you feel good/bad depending on how u initially perceived ur actions.. maybe guilt cos u can't resist ur urge, maybe satisfaction because u indulged urself exquisitely.Then you concluded after evaluation that it is okay to pamper yourself once in a while and not feel bad. Maybe even setting up a routine so that this becomes a regular perk to motivate you towards greater goals in life. This eg delineates an entire process of tension, action and reflection. Now lets go in depth into the 3 elements.

Tension - A feeling/sensation, positive or negative, that causes you to literally feel charged up. This could result from a push, a pull in any combinations from any number of sides. Ok this sound pretty much like forces in physics. But there you go,translating it in life, this is it. Tension doesn't recognise direction, it comes in any magnitude, from anyone, even including yourself. It includes encouragement, discouragement, motivation, despondence etc. Any thing that constitutes an attractive/repulsive force which "charges" us up for fight/flight would qualify. But take note, feeling good after obtaining good results for e.g. might be a one time off sensation and doesnt contribute to further developments later on do not come under tension.. these are just passing events.. they are spectators, decorations.

Action - This is the real thing. Something visible, tangible. A manifestation of our innate charged up tendencies. How we feel is reflected in what we do. What we achieve is what we conceive. Why we do it is how we feel it should be done. Thats it. Simple. Yet the jewel lies in this process. The takeaways in life are encapsulated, more often disguised, buried, and enmeshed in this bizzare, perplexing, and sometimes outwardly threatening event. The timeframe for our execution of actions can be long, short, it doesnt matter. The fact is our learning point commences here. Cliches like life is a journey, not a destination, what we do is not important as how we do, it is the process that matters etc, takes its meaning through it. Different people gain different insights and feelings through their actions. Some serve as big revelations, discoveries, some serve to validate their own viewpoints. The baseline is: we all learn something. What everyone learn is unique to him/herself.

Reflection - Most people never do this enough. Reflection is not easy. It involves thinking about what you've learnt about in your actions, and evaluate it for the better growth of yourself. That is to say, there must be a conclusion and an end to what you found out. It must be specific. For e.g, this has helped me in... i would not want to do this again.. ok these are just VERY SUPERFICIAL examples. Keyword here is think. Think hard and think deep. Align it to your purpose of the event. Re-orientate it to you current situation in life. Reposition yourself after your actions, re-evaluate your current position, and plan the next path. Make some decisions. Discard what is useless to you, be it thoughts, ideas, anything tangible included. reflection is the bridge to your next mission in life. you need the link, or else you are just mundane. you are stagnating, going through motion.

So herein i've tried as best as possible to explain these 3 elements of TAR. Every element is equally important and has its reason for existence. However i would like to stress that every individual might not experience or i should say derive the full benefits of every stage. Some might not reflect enough, some do not place importance on their learning experiences, some simply ward off tension in their lives because of fear. To each he moulds his own way of life. We can experience more cycles than many others in that short period of time. It differs. Important thing is that we move, we progress, and we are not afraid to face it.