At any rate, earlier in the day I’d been reading Aristotle, my favorite philosopher king, so I thought I’d apply that wise man’s logistical approach to my dilemma, and I went through a series of queries to see how I’d gone from A to B.  So…

Could I have been visited by phantasms?  Possibly, though I’ve never understood exactly what a phantasm is, so this was crossed off the list, as was any attempt at understanding Aristotle when he begins talking about phantasms.  But seriously, folks…  All right, then.  Start externally with what we know to be true.  Had any physical circumstances changed between points A & B?  Not really.  It was quieter, maybe, but the room and my body were identical.  I was perhaps digesting food, but this does not produce anxiety by itself.  And what of circumstantial changes with direct effect?  Had I received any information between A & B?  Again, no.  Everything I knew at 4am I knew at 10pm.  And what of outside nautral forces unseen?  Was the brain moving through a cycle of thoughts that inevitably includes the good, the bad and the ugly and I happened to awaken during the bad and the ugly?  Unlikely.  The mind is not a merry-go-round with a schedule to keep.  There is no discernible pattern to the mental horses coming around.

I went on in this manner for a few minutes, adding a few more questions, breaking the inquiry out further and further, and always finding a simple way to negate their premises.  I eventually concluded that the one thing that had changed was, simply enough, a random shift in what I had decided to think about.  The only change had occurred in my mind, by my mind, of my mind, but it was, somewhere, somehow, mine to keep.

Which brings us to the heart of the matter.  If the mind is capable of stepping left and right in midnight two-steps, does it have to be on auto-pilot, or can we put some black and white foot marks down on the floor and dance to our own number?  Thinking seems to be both an arbitrary and elective process.  I can concentrate on something when I want to, or I can be swept away in thought.  One is not more true than the other.  I can feel fine at 10pm and lousy at 4am, despite nothing being different.

I’m given to the idea that we can exert much more control than we do, that you, me, Tom, Dick and Harry can all choose to feel a certain way, can decide to think about things, and can wake up at 4am and tell ourselves to go back to sleep just like snapping our fingers.  If you disagree, that’s fine.  But I’m going to start with the idea that it can be done and see where it takes me.  After all, nobody landed on the moon by writing “This will never happen” on the motivational whiteboard.  And I hear the moon is lovely this time of year.

For the Mineralava Musings, this is Edoardo Ballerini.

I’ve said before that I believe in choice of focus.  And I do.  It’s not always easy, but we can decide what to think about, how to feel about it, and who to be.  Uncontrolled thoughts will arise, of course, this is perfectly natural, but what we do with them is largely an exercise in free will.  And like any other skill in life, it requires a learning curve, practice, failure and more practice.  But we must never lose sight of the fact – yes, fact – that the possibility for change exists.

I told a friend that I’m getting better at my focus, laying my success rate at “9 out of 10 times” for making the positive choice.  I went further and said that I’d like to get that up to “99 out of 100″ and then “999 out of 1,000.”  Since that seemed pretty darn good, I left it there.  But I took some delight that my instinct was to leave room for the one bad choice, or failure, or letdown, or whatever we want to call it.  For without the one, the 9, 99 and 999 don’t exist.  Without the one, there is nothing to learn from.  Without the one, we have no touchstone.  In a word, without the suffering, we have no shot at happiness.  Does this mean that those who suffer will be happy?  Not necessarily.  There’s the small matter of mindfulness in between, that is, the recognition of having the choice.  Eureka!  Awareness is all!  I must share this revelation with everybody!

(Pause.)

There’s a particular satisfaction in arriving at the same conclusions much wiser people came to 2,500 years ago.  You feel at once enlightened – “Hey, I got there, too!” – and a bit of a lovable dunce.

Emphasis on the lovable.

For the Mineralava Musings, this is Edoardo Ballerini.

The Popeye Syndrome is the most debilitating idea anybody can ever entertain.  People change radically all the time.  I can hear the cynics chortling in the background.  Ha!  People are inherently selfish.  Bad things happen.  My girlfriend would never do that with me, no matter how drunk I got her.  That’s fine.  I’m not suggesting the world can be flat tomorrow.  But things that once made you cry can make you laugh.  Things that you once thought ugly can be beautiful.  And fears you once held can give you strength.  Shakespeare, who was a shade brighter than Popeye, tells us “There’s nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”  I nearly had a bloody fight over the interpretation of this line a couple of years ago.  Since I still have my teeth, I’m  confident I triumphed in that contest, so I’m sticking to my idea that it means anything and everything is interpretive.  Anything and everything.  The death of a loved one is painful because we believe it to be so.  It is not inherently painful.  It’s our feelings and thoughts about the event.  Your belief that you’ll never amount to anything, or be happy, is only a belief, not a fact.  Big difference.

You can change.  You can change anything you want to about yourself.  It takes work, but it gets easier the more you do it.  But it starts with the understanding that it’s possible.  Hey, you isn’t what you was when you started reading this.

For the Mineralava Musings, this is Edoardo Ballerini.