Everyday Canvas

The Power of Thoughts

Prompt: Buddha said, "We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves." Do you believe this is true?

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On Thanksgiving Day, my daughter-in-law wore a pink shirt that had the inscription of “Happy Thoughts” in front. Just to look at her lovely face is enough to light up a place, but the shirt added an extra illumination to the good mood of the rest of us old folks. This alone is proof enough that Buddha is right when he said, “We are shaped by our thoughts.”

The same thought is also reflected in As a Man Thinketh, a literary essay by James Allen, published in 1902.
http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0304spiritpsych/030405thinketh/030405thoughto...
In it, Allen likens the mind to a garden and keeping it weed-free and cultivating it with flowers and useful plants turns him into the master gardener of his soul.

Identity is the distinct personality of a person and is, to a degree, shaped by the cultural and personal experiences. Through those experiences, thoughts on various aspects of life are created. Still to develop and improve on those thoughts and turn the negative ones into positives is an individual’s duty in order to gain a free and joyful mind and a constructive, optimistic identity.

By this, I don’t mean we should all be replicas of Pollyanna; far from it. I don’t believe one can take a tragedy like the Holocaust and turn it into a happy thing in one’s mind, but one can always clear oneself from the negative effects of such a horrific happening, as many survivors did, such as Viktor Frankl who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning, a book that impressed me greatly. This quote from it puts what I am trying to say in a perfect nutshell. “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Then here’s another one: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” The “space” Frankl is talking about belongs to how we process anything and form our thoughts on it.

On the other hand, this undertaking has to be a more difficult thing to do if one has been abused constantly in his growing years and now is living in a war zone, always afraid for his life. Still, mastering one's thoughts is doable and, no matter what happens to the person event-wise, his life could be more rewarding if he succeeds in this endeavor.