Harmful Thoughts

I fool myself when I think that my harmful thoughts about myself don't affect the way I move in the world.

"Trying to fix the world is like trying to change a movie by manipulating the movie screen. The world as we know it is simply a screen onto which we project our thoughts. Until we change those thoughts, the movie stays the same."
- Marianne Williamson, 'The Gift of Change'

I give myself permission to neglect others when I neglect myself. And I give myself permission to hate others when I hate myself.

The opposite is also true: When I am loving myself I am also loving the whole world.

I think I just watched a young-cutie Starbucks barista experience this:

I ask him, "How are you doing?"

He answers, "Over-worked and under-paid."

I find myself questioning whether I should bother him further, but I know that he just gave me his honest answer because he feels familiar with me.

So I order.

And he proceeds to spill the hot beverage onto his hand.

I said something stupid like, "Oh please don't do that. You are just torturing yourself. I heard what you said about how you're feeling right now."

He got a bit perturbed. Not only was he already feeling put-out by his job, but then he burned his hand, and I'm pointing out the whole situation to him.

At the end of our transaction, I said, "Be well." And as I walked away I found myself questioning again my support of this experience. It did seem to give a real time example of how when we are already in a bad mind state things only seem to contribute to that feeling of "having a bad day."

Doesn't this kind of thing happen all the time?


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