Your life changes with your thinking

According to Aristotle says, Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” Author Arthur Gordon tells of a time in his life when he began to feel that everything was stale and flat. His enthusiasm had all but disappeared; his writing efforts were fruitless, and the situation was getting worse day by day. Finally, he decided to get help from a medical doctor. Observing nothing physically wrong, the doctor asked him if he would be able to follow his instructions for one day. When Gordon replied that he could, the doctor told him to spend the following day in a place where he was the happiest as a child. He could take food, but he was not to talk to anyone or to read or write or listen to the radio. He then wrote out four prescriptions and told him to open one at nine, twelve, three, and six o’clock.

“Are you serious?” Gordon asked him. “You won’t think I’m joking when you get my bill!” was the reply.

So the next morning, Gordon went to the beach. As he opened the first prescription, he read, “Listen carefully.” He thought the doctor was insane! How could he listen for three hours? Nevertheless, he had agreed to follow the doctor’s order, so he listened. He heard the usual sounds of the sea and the birds. After a while, he could hear the other sounds that weren’t so apparent at first. As he listened, he began to think of lessons the sea had taught him as a child — patience, respect and an awareness of the interdependence of things. He began to listen to the sounds — and the silence — and to feel a growing peace deep within.

At noon, he opened the second slip of paper and read, “Try reaching back.” “Reaching back to what?” he wondered, perhaps to childhood, perhaps to memories of joy. He tried to remember them with exactness, and in remembering, he found growing warmth inside.

At three o’clock, he opened the third piece of paper. Until now, the prescriptions had been easy to take, but this one was different; it said, “Examine your motives.” At first he was defensive. He thought about what he wanted — success, security, recognition –and he justified them all. Yet then the thought occurred to him that those motives weren’t good enough. That perhaps therein was the answer to his stagnant situation. He considered his motives deeply and thought about past happiness, and at last, the answer came to him. In a flash of certainty, he wrote, “I saw that if one’s motives are wrong, nothing can be right. It makes no difference whether you are a mail carrier, a hairdresser, an insurance salesperson, a home-maker — whatever. As long as you feel you are serving others, you do the job well. When you are concerned only with helping yourself, you do it less well-a law as unrelenting as gravity.”

When six o’clock came, the fourth prescription didn’t take long to fill. “Write your worries on the sand,” it said. He knelt and wrote several words with a piece of broken shell; then he turned and walked away. He didn’t look back. He knew the tide would come in!”

In his book Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut, writes: “In the beginning, God created the Earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness. And God said, “Let us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what we have done.” And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close to mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke.

“What is purpose of all this?” he asked politely. “Everything must have a purpose” said God. “Certainly” replied man. “Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God and He went away.

The greatest discovery of man is his thought. Through which he can know himself. When you think, you can understand the meaning of your life. We are not all created without a purpose. It is different matter how many of us never know the purpose of coming into the world. They come and go and lead an ordinary aimless and meaningless life, because they never think. Life is a state of mind. It’s just according to the way you looked at things. So if you want to change your life, change your thinking.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 3^rd, 2023.

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