Aspiring to lead a life as active as ancients

Imagine the scene. It's a late Saturday morning and you're in weekend mode, as far as the groggy gray can grasp after just involuntarily binge-watching another "theater of the mind" episode of Recurring Dream, Season 29 — "The one where you arrive late to the SAT test-site sans your No 2 pencils" — again!

Who'd wanna view these regret-riddled reveries repeatedly? It isn't as if in the land of Nod our eyelids are pried open like in Clockwork Orange? Anyhoo, pardon my extended rant, but I, for one, am tired of retaking the college entrance exam every night in the witching hours only to be rejected from the Ivy Leagues again.

Back to Saturday morning. The cobwebs have been wiped away and you peer at your cellphone only to see it's already closer to tomorrow than yesterday. Past noon. Overslept again! But I had such grand plans on this precious day off to handle the cobwebs under the couch and behind the refrigerator, do a long-overdue laundry load, iron those shirts taking on raisin-like textures, and take a long round-trip walk to the supermarket for some self-selected fresh produce.

Well, I need to take my mind off flunking the SAT five minutes ago, and what better catharsis and diversion than a quick look at Douyin/Moments? Wow! That guy really trained a polar bear from birth to fetch him condiments from the fridge?! And that kind lady found a whimpering pup at death's door in a dumpster and nursed it back to health with a heart-wrenching soundtrack playing?

And … what! Now it's 1 pm! Well, this day is quickly slipping into the inactive, total inertia memory hole, unless I bootstrap myself out of bed in the general direction of the coffee maker, and get this truncated day off to a delayed but still-salvageable start.

So, since I'm here in China, and probably a goodly number of the tens of millions of readers enjoying this article right now are as well, it's only fitting that we take inspirational aspiration from the ancient poets and philosophers to learn how to cope with the quirks, foibles, vagaries and tribulations of everyday life. In other words, what do the masters of the ink brush of ages past have to tell us about confronting our bad habits, avoiding things in general getting stuck in our collective craw, and leading more meaningful, purposeful lives?

First, let's not get ahead of our skis. The ancients cited below knew nothing about Douyin, let alone skis. So if we're looking to fourth-century Chinese poets to help us put down our handsets while we have tea with a friend, hit the road, Jack. They didn't have Androids back in the day.

Here are some oft-cited ancient Chinese proverbs, all unattributed, unfortunately. But I think we can run with that. Trust me. You've read this far, haven't you?

To get your creaking carcass out of bed in the morning and to the Folgers, here are a few aspirational analects, with some being closer to the old bone than others:

"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now."

"Fear not growing slowly. Be afraid only of not growing at all."

And finally, one that our ubiquitous handsets can actually monitor these days: "The journey of a thousand li starts with a single step."

If these golden oldies don't motivate you, or perhaps fully depress you, then I'm afraid there's no hope and I'll meet you at the billiard hall as per usual.

Contact the writer at andrew@chinadaily.com.cn