I think I will end this part of my journal here with this thought. Of course, I would like to punctuate this with some emotion to trigger the thought machine to take on a new direction.

It’s amazing to me how we grow up and somehow, we still manage to stay the same. We age some and we grow some. If we’re lucky, we learn some. Hopefully, we can change some and improve some too. I am thinking about the things I see throughout my day. I am thinking about people who honk their horns on the expressway. I’m thinking of people who refuse to allow the car beside them to merge ahead of them simply because they want to be the one who gets there first. It’s amazing to me the way we take on arguments with people we don’t know or people we will never see again. It equally amazes me how we completely surrender our sanity. 

I go back to the point of this and the reason why I’ve decided to write this book or the others before it. At some point, I came to a staggering realization that I was part of the 85% who were unhappy with their work life, which bled into my home life. I was part of the mindless motions of everyday commuters. I had my traditional cup of coffee in hand and a newspaper folded beneath my arm. Each morning, I was heading to a job that was more of a habit than a passion. My body knew which way to go, when to turn left or right, when to pause, when to stop and when to go. I was almost Pavlovian in the sense that my day was mainly predictable. Nothing was ever exciting or fulfilling. Instead, mine was a simple case of life on the clock. I punched in to prove my existence and at the end of the day, I logged off to prove that I had ceased to exist in the corporate world.

Here’s a great quote from the Buddha who said, “We are what we think, all that we are arises with our thoughts, with our thoughts we make the world.”

I love this quote because this helps us understand more about the way we think. Therefore, if we think something is true then we believe this must be true. Meanwhile thoughts are neither true or false. They’re only thoughts. There can be a thousand variances and still, thoughts are only thoughts. Nothing else.

This understanding helps me formulate a simple deduction. On average, I have read details that we think an estimated 70,000 thoughts on any given day. I suppose this makes the mind a busy place to be.

Each year, we celebrate something old with something new. We celebrate birthdays and holidays, and of course, Thanksgiving and Christmas are claimed to be the most wonderful time of the year. We celebrate with our families. We enjoy meals at tables with unending plates of food. We exchange gifts. We welcome in the New Year and talk about our New Year’s resolution. Then we laugh and say, “Hey, maybe I’ll stick with it this year. You think?”

There is always someone around to tell you why your dreams will never work. There is always someone looking to disprove your theories. There will always be crabs in the bucket.
There is always someone who looks to criticize and point out your flaws. They’ll tell you what’s wrong to keep you down. And be mindful that this is about them. Not you.