192

Be glad—when wrong.

Be grateful—when suffering.

Be eager—when uncertain.

The more we can condition ourselves to embrace—not spurn, circumvent, nor avoid feeling—these indispensable components of life, the faster we can realize that we have all that we need right now, at this very moment, to live a satisfying and reverent life.

191

It is all too easy to fixate on a world comprised of incorrigible tyrants, of harrowing iniquity and unforgivable avarice; of a society mired in perpetual conflict, engulfed in a miasma of hate, ignorance, and blame; of a life filled with relentless suffering, seemingly insurmountable challenges, and impassable chasms of truth. And yet the worst realization of all is that we might just be part of the problem ourselves.

We can choose the valid answer that will make us miserable, or the valid answer that will make us happy. Indeed, there is no end to the things we can suffer from. But we seldom remember there is also no end to the things we can derive joy from. There is as much beauty to be found in the world as there is suffering. But only if we can learn to see both at the same time. Or, perhaps, as one and the same.

190

For the vast majority of my life, I’ve always run under the impression that our thoughts are free—that we can bask in the freedom of our own mind, that the liberty of conjuring any thought at any moment is one meant to be exercised to the fullest extent.

On the surface, these haphazard internal monologues, these whimsical mental escapades into the absurd, and these petty rants against the world that we concoct in our minds are all merely an exercise in that aforementioned freedom. It may seem that every thought is boundlessly free, but the truth is that our thoughts come at an immense, incalculable cost; I would argue that they end up being far more pivotal than our spoken words or actions, for the sole reason that such spoken words and actions are nearly always indelibly branded with the content of our thoughts. If there was any free will and any place to even begin to find it, it is here, through our thoughts. Indeed, our thoughts determine the color of our soul; they stain the fabric of our information space, tint the lens by which we view the world, and manipulate the spectrum of emotions that we can perceive. We must tirelessly remember that every thought that saunters into the mind, irrespective of how persistent or transitory they end up becoming, is equally capable of beautifying or destroying our experience of life.

We don’t have to have an opinion about everything. It can be just as it is; it doesn’t have to be something to us. If we decide to think about something, we are equally deciding to not think about something else. And if it doesn’t waste time, it wastes away the soul; the content of our thoughts is ultimately what we devote the heart and the soul towards, regardless of how disparate or paltry the portion of that devotion is.

If we are to be truly resolute in our mission—if we are to be the best version of ourselves to effect change in this world—we must be ever vigilant of both the origin and the purpose of every thought that enters the mind. To recklessly ponder trivialities, to toy with the insipid, to rouse the inconsequential, to burden the soul either with things that we either cannot or should not control—these are hindrances.

Remember who you set out to be. And what you set out to do.

189

A key component of mindfulness is internalizing this delicate balance of patience and desperation as we approach every aspect of our lives.

For the things that need to wait, we have no patience,

and for the things that cannot wait, we have no desperation.

We eliminate possibility when we do not let certain opportunities or relationships in our lives pan out beyond their initial chapters,

and we also eliminate it when we let other opportunities or relationships haplessly perish and dissipate because of our own negligence and complacency.

188

You’re not alone.

187

The individual that walks this life relying solely upon emotion becomes a slave to their circumstances, and the individual that walks this life relying solely upon reason becomes a slave to themselves.

186

In a world with pervaded by uncertainty, to live a life well lived means choosing to counter it with a blind and naïve sense of certainty and declare that we know when we don’t know, or to embrace it boldly and valiantly as an indispensable and integral part of this existence.

How lamentable are those that linger and drift in this world, stranded continually in limbo, neither resolute nor mindful, vacillating between the extremes of certainty and uncertainty.

185

We latch onto nonsensical notions like regret and brutalize the mind and heart by thinking we could have done better, when the stark reality is that we couldn't have because we were haplessly entangled in the fabric of space and dragged by the currents of time.

"How, then, can we break free from this cycle—this ceaseless chain of cause and effect?"

Indeed, it may be that we have no free will—that the course of the universe is wholly and truly inexorable. But whether we possess it or not matters less than if we can align what we desire with this inexorable course of the world—if we can interlock what we seek with what we actually find, if we can find a way to overlay a story upon the chaos and the void, if we can coalesce possibility with fate.

“For we carry our fate with us, and it carries us.”

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

184

Perhaps the largest disconnect between humanity and the universe it resides in is that we wake up day after day believing nothing has changed, when in reality, everything has. We are so engrossed into the stories that we’ve told ourselves, so captivated and convinced by themes, motifs, themes, and patterns that they are all that we see, despite the entropy and the chaos that perpetually pervades us.

We downplay the contribution we each make towards this ceaseless chain of cause in effect in the world; we fail to recognize that every thought, every belief, every action, and every word spoken—no matter how minute, fleeting, or transitory they may seem—has a permanent and irreversible effect on the course of the universe.

183

Mindfulness exists so that self-doubt does not devolve into cowardice, and so that confidence does not devolve into bravado.

It is the discernment to be able to winnow the possible from the impossible, to sift the truth from the untruth.