Blog 719 – 08.11.2018
Thinking The Same Thoughts

Thinking the same thoughts day after day, year after year is like being marooned on a desert island. The island may be a lovely paradise but being trapped there is to be a prisoner not free to see and experience the wider world around us. Some thoughts are so seductive, so safe, so comforting, others quite scary and debilitating. A new thought came to me recently as I was thinking about nostalgia and the sort of anxiety that I feel when a wave of it comes over me. Do you know the feeling? At first a haunting memory of a sweet something from the past or even a desire for the future and then an ache for it and a feeling we will just drowned in utter want for it. I have never experienced a chemical addiction unless Crystal or White Castle burgers and Krispy Kreme doughnuts count, but I believe that the wish to find a chemical to distract our thoughts from this hollow ache can be a driver for chemical addictions. Thinking the same thought cuts a deeper and deeper groove in our psyche, a groove that is harder and harder to get out of. What we need is a more harmless less drastic distraction.

For my daughter Emily who suffered in young adulthood from panic or anxiety attacks listening to Andy Rooney’s voice was such a distraction. But I believe we have a better more soothing voice always available to us, referred to in some places as the still small voice. This voice we have heard all our lives attempting to get our attention away from thoughts that come to torment us. What in the Heaven are you talking about Doctor Dave? (The title is not honorary as you might guess but self conferred after years in the university of wandering around in the wilderness and finally waking up.) I am talking about those nasty persistent thoughts like pesky little birds that just keep popping into our heads, many starting out as a memory pleasant or otherwise. We need only remember, like the ole Outer Limits intro that, “We control the audio, the video, the horizontal, and the vertical…” We are the captains of our fate and the masters of all we survey. We are in charge of our thoughts just like we control the TV.

Adding new thoughts and picking the good ones to groove on is what makes us feel more in charge of our lives. I am not sure I believe in any other destiny that this – we are destined to make real in our lives what we think about most. Or as my friend, Mike Dooley says, “Thoughts become things, pick the good ones.”

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White