~ Wednesday, April 4, 2001 ~

 

11:56 p.m. Yeah, where was I? I had the old art-mobile photo all gussied up for yesterday's entry and the mood just didn't seem right to talk about art, or thinking, or the power of the human mind to create our personalities out of whole cloth ... and is the mood ever right for a lecture?

Probably not.

But I'm going to do it anyway. I've had a bit of a revelation that I wanted to share. Who knows, it may help you, too.

Lately, I've been somewhat frozen in terror at my inability to get a certain amount of writing done, and then there was the dentist to worry about, as well as the endless march of bills, bills, bills, and let's see ... health, mortality, wealth, heaven, hell ... yes, I think that about covers it.

So, as a sort of sop to my worry, I've taken to listening to late night talk radio, specifically a certain program called Roy of Hollywood on KPFK. It's sort of a catchall collection of self-help tapes played nonstop from midnight until 6 a.m.

So there was this guy on the other night and he was talking about some experiments he's conducted -- positive thinking, miracles -- the same old same old. What caught my attention, however, was his casual mention of the approximate amount of thoughts we zap through our heads from ear to ear of a day.

Hundreds of thousands of thoughts, many of the self-assessment variety. I certainly know what he means. I'm always giving myself pep talks or coaching myself out of a slump or browbeating myself from behind the brow ... and I always start from the central premise that I should be working harder. Trying harder.

And it occurred to me -- what if, instead of stepping up the rah-rah coaching and the self-flagellation, what if I changed the central premise? What if I were (already) a happy creative person, a healthy thin person?

Instead of trying to become these things ... what if I already were these things? What would a creative person be doing right now, I wondered? (And that's when I grabbed the camera and took the photo of the purple car in the street, rather smug that I'd just nabbed the photo for the day.)

Or. how would a creative person approach the terror of the dentist? (Why, with a book and a notepad and an open heart because there might be, must be, something to learn from it.)

What would a thin person eat for lunch, you might ask? Glad you did -- because I can tell you. A thin person eats just exactly what she wants, but no more, not a single bite more, than she wants.

See how it works? You might want to try it on your own most pernicious problems. Instead of trying to be tidy or a nonsmoker or prompt or rich, why not assume you already are -- and then take your next act, and the next, accordingly.

We are constructed, bit by bit, by our own hand. If you have a mind to change the nature of your own construction, I think you can do it.

Wouldn't it be incredibly cool if it's as easy as this? It might just be. I'm working on it, even as we speak.