Thought over a thought...

Yesterday I heard someone from a nearby cube say, ".... we are already serving a life sentence!" That, sort of philosophical retort, just caught my attention. The deeper implication of what he said is probably true to some extent, but its literal meaning, constrained within the language limits, painted a dark and depressing image right away. "Is it that bad?", I asked myself. With that very question, I had another one, "is it 'bad' in the first place?" It got me thinking...

There's so much happening around us. But I guess what happens within us is the real guiding force that creates our perception of the world outside. What we see, is so much the reflection of what we feel and most importantly what we think. Our thoughts decide the course of our actions and therefore ultimately influence our attitude, perspective, beliefs... everything!

I have experienced this often. If I am troubled by some thought, everybody around seems to be adding to that trouble. On the contrary, if I am happy and excited, the world just appears to be all kind and helping and that further adds up to my morale. Its not just me, I have observed this with lots of other people, friends, colleagues, family members. We all do it! Since childhood, we have been building our own world(by this I mean our own impression of the people and things around). Just that its become so natural that we've lost the distinction as to what causes what.

How I wish, I had this awareness right from my birth! But still, its not difficult. These days I started experimenting a little. If I start getting angry very often or start cribbing about how bad things are going around, the moment I realize this irritation, I try to figure out what is the thought within me that's causing this. Quite often its not difficult to find. It speaks out loud and clear and most of the times it turns out to be Me - I am not happy with myself. Even if its someone else at the front, if I go deeper below, I see myself playing the over-expecting, demanding or indifferent character. Sometimes its not the immediate incident, its a chain and again, I sit at the root of it. When I get myself till this realization, I am already cooled down. The surging emotions get a check and I get a clear picture of the situation. Sometimes there's also regret (Again, this is not to be taken as self-blame, its just taking the ownership/responsibility of actions/reactions happening around me). Otherwise, if its really not my doing, I can clearly detach and it will no longer bother me. But the moment I become aware/conscious of this, everything around which was wrong till then, gets back to normal.

But this doesn't happen always so easily. There are times when I do realize but still the thought is so strong that I have to fight a lot against it. I have not really attained that self-control and awareness where I can quickly realize and get out of that troubling mood. But I strongly believe that consciously, if I keep up this experiment it will gradually become a practice.

Why I find this important is: it not only keeps me calm and poised, it improves my thought quality. When I think, I think clean!

Its amazing the way just one thought can influence our entire outlook. Being aware of this very fact, is the key. If we can watch our thought-chain, we can not only control our interactions with others but also channelize the entire flow towards building a healthy environment around us. There's lot of scope for self-experimentation here. We talk about the unexplored potentials of a human mind, but even before that, we have so many things we already know, to be explored and experimented right.

Coming back to where I started, agreed, we are not here by choice (or may be we did choose). But I believe, This journey is The purpose and we are already empowered with the means. There's lot of right potential reserved and built in us. We have our minds, completely free to innovate and experiment! Therefore, I would rather say, "Its an honor to serve this life sentence!"