Dear Diary,
Daily insights and analysis of thoughts overheard from smart people on YouTube haven’t gone anywhere, simply the weekly summary of them has moved from the social network with 596 additional pairs of ears to romantic discussions on a bench with one additional pair of ears, overlooking a fountain. At this point I feel I’m somewhat slighting those five or seven of my readers who curiously poke their noses into what I write for you here and, even, in a certain way wait for new entries. So, as an offering to them… :-)
One of these evenings, relaxing and watching one of my favorite philosopher’s speeches, I overheard a delightful piece of advice he gave to his audience sitting in the hall. Look, he says, it seems everything is clear to everyone – in our heads we all have our mind with its thoughts and images, and around us stretches a vast, frightening, greedy and unfair outer world. However, to experience a somewhat altered form of one’s existence for a moment, all you need to do is give your attention a simple task – find that bright or somewhat faded boundary where our mind ends and the outside begins. Attention carefully gropes around the forehead area, then takes small steps further, further still, a meter, a kilometer, hundreds of kilometers – and the boundary simply isn’t there. So, say, this fellow sitting with you in one office – is the very fact that he’s a fellow – mind? Mind. And that fellow standing on the other side of the street – mind? Mind. And that one over there, two kilometers away, standing on a hilltop – mind? Mind. And the one who landed on the Moon? And the one who flew to Mars? So it turns out that the fact you live surrounded by fellows is not the merit of an external world with which, it turns out, you don’t have any dividing line at all. It is merely your own thoughts, your own mind, which, by the way, also becomes that boundless world in which you day after day live. And not only live, but search for ways to escape from it. But the biggest joke lies in the fact that no matter what you change – apartment, city, country or planet – your self-created world always follows you without lagging or tiring, it is always with you, it is always where you are.
And conversely – to immerse and breathe in a bright moment where nothing is lacking, where there are no others, no bad ones, no inadequate salary and equally inadequate charlatans at the helm of the state, no “I want”, “I must” and “deadline” – you can do it sitting in your favorite chair. Or on your favorite stump in a favorite forest. A bench in a beloved park with a view of a beloved fountain. Or a simple back seat of a trolleybus. All you need to see is that it’s not the outer world that makes you unhappy. What makes you unhappy are your own thoughts about it, your own labels you stick on it.
Have a wonderful Sunday!
