Thought Rentals

I haven't written anything other than projects for a long time. It's been because I'm working on those a lot. But today is my birthday, and I took off work... so this morning I'm enjoying my coffee and flipping through some channels when Joyce Meyer flailed her arms at me and said "dyat, dyat, dyat, dyat, dyat." Interested, I flipped back to her.

She was talking about driving by what I gathered was a mountain, and for some reason this mountain, or billboard, or whatever, made her upset. She said, "each day while driving by this thing, I got a little more and more upset. I spent years doing that. It was only after I realized how the rest of my days went (they followed that upset rhythm), that I said to myself, 'by the grace of God, I'm going to discipline myself to not be upset.'"

Disciplining our thoughts. There's something to write about. Why should we have to discipline them? Why can't she choose what she thinks; how she feels? Why doesn't that mountain show her beauty instead of simply being an obstacle?

Who owns our thoughts if not us?

There Joyce is this morning, trying to teach people how to adjust the leases on their thoughts, as if the thoughts themselves own themselves, and we're simply landlords. Or the mountain owned her thoughts. Now, chime in if I'm wrong, but I believe we choose how we feel. Right down to the initial reaction. Most of us place our thoughts in autopilot though, simply to feel how we do based on our own preconception of who we are and how we've reacted to that circumstance in the past.

There's a turnbridge on my route to work (click here for comic strip, set it to fast for effect). When the line of cars waits, I imagine everyone cussing silently to themselves about the inconvenience. But here are some pictures of those scenes, what's so important that these aren't beautiful anymore? That all we feel is annoyed? I've been working on burning through all that lease paperwork on my thoughts, and taking real ownership. I plant the seed where I like.... You miss real beauty by leasing your thoughts to the daily grind, to the thoughts, themselves, to worrying about the future...