Day 115 - The Thought That Counts

you lookin' at me?

I think they're talking about me...they are, aren't they?  Damned jackdaws!

Paranoia...why am I talking about that, eh?!  You saying I'm paranoid??

The fact that I'm paranoid doesn't mean that the world isn't out to get me, you know!

Seriously though, I don't suffer from paranoia at all...but I see a lot of it about.  So many people are weighed down by negative mindsets, in a quagmire of insecurity, fear and doubt, embroiled in the self fulfilment of victimhood.  

The more paranoid among us breed the perfect conditions for us to have reason to feel paranoid.  Treat others with mistrust and suspicion, and they soon tire of it and start to exclude us, so feeding our paranoia further...

A neat little system, designed to create supporting evidence for our low self esteem and lack of self worth, to prove ourselves right, and so validate our self abuse.

I do understand the pitfalls of such thinking - I was young and depressed and paranoid, once upon a time. 

But I learned that I am not a victim of the world...more likely the world is a victim of me (me being a 21st century human male, and a middle aged caucasian at that...surely the most ecologically disastrous, indulgently over-rewarded demographic there is!)

Yet my circumstances do not make me Who I Am...that which goes on around me is not happening to me, it's just happening.  I am free, in each successive moment, to be Who I Am, despite what's happening around me.  

You can slap me in the face, figuratively or literally, and I can smile and forgive you.

Don't get me wrong, I may not smile and forgive you - but it is an option that's available to me.   To pretend otherwise is to deny that I am master of myself (my self), that I am more than an automaton, that I have free will.

I'm not suggesting it's easy...it isn't.  It takes effort, and determination, and self belief...and as much as any of those, practise and time. 

But it is possible to be master and director of your own mind, to favour thoughts that you proactively choose to think.  

At some point, you may also realise that it's not the world around you that makes you unhappy, but the thoughts you think about the world around you.  If I say something mean to you, the reality is just a few vibrations in the air passing across your ear...how could it hurt you?  It's your mental and emotional reaction to my words that creates the pain and discomfort in you.  

The way you feel at any moment is less a reflection of the world around you, as a reflection of the thoughts you are having about the world around you.

As Anais Nin so succinctly put it;

We don't see things the way they are.  We see things the way we are.

Now, if you accept that in this sense at least, it's the thought that counts, then soon you may realise the potential of this phenomena:

If your unhappiness is due to the thoughts in your head, and you are master and director of the thoughts in your head...then why not choose to think only those thoughts that lead you to feel better, and importantly, choose not to think those thoughts that make you feel worse...or feel afraid, or suspicious...or mistrusting, or jealous...or doubtful, or insecure, or depressed, or paranoid.

Choose not to think the thoughts, and you can stop feeling the negative feelings.

I'm not suggesting that this can be true for everyone, all the time...but it is possible for all of us to do it, some of the time...

And in that time, we will be happy...

;-)