I know a happy man living on a USD100 monthly income, living in a 3x4m room in Jakarta. I know an unhappy man who rolls in three Mercedes Benzes, five houses, two wives and a million followers. How did the standards of happiness become so different from one person to the next?
Force of Mental Habit
We can't control the external world. A thobe is a thobe, but if you hate wearing it, well it's not the thobe's fault, is it? However you feel about a million or three, it's not the money's fault for being there or not, is it? Nor it is the country's, the government's, the spouse's, the children's or the cats' and dogs' fault.
If we can put things into our heads (longing, hating, loving, fear), we can also remove them. Especially the imaginary things, like a BlackBerry or a lost relation or "more, more, more". If we can teach our minds to love someone/something, we definitely can train it to un-love.
Since this special freedom of thought is forever ours, whether it's in a hermitage on a mountain or in the deep pockets of an urban slum, then we are free to choose between joy or misery anywhere we can choose our thoughts. ('Coz sometimes I can't think when the whole crowd's yelling.)
What would you choose to think today?
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