Rearrange your mind

LOOK INSIDE

Yes, you can choose the best; and at the same time, know that you can let the best choose you. Once you know this, an extra spring comes to your step, strength suffuses your spirit and resilience enters your body.

A 92-year-old man who is full dressed by 8 am each morning, hair combed, perfectly shaved, though legally blind, moved to a nursing home today. His wife, 70, recently passed away, making the move rather necessary.

After several hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, he smiled sweetly when told his room was ready. As he manoeuvred his walker to the elevator, he was provided with a visual description of his tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that had been hung on his window. “I love it,” he stated with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having just been presented with a new puppy. “Mr Jones, you haven’t seen the room, just wait,” said the lady.

“That doesn’t have anything to do with it,” he replied. “Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn’t depend on how the furniture is arranged. It’s how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it. It’s a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice; I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do.”

Jones continued, “Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open, I’ll focus on the new day, all the happy memories I’ve stored away. Just like we clean out a shelf, throw out the clutter and replace the remaining stuff neatly, we need to dust our mind, rid it off garbage and rearrange our thoughts as well. It’s about not quitting on yourself. It’s all about cheering yourself on. About practising positivity tirelessly and allowing the best to choose you.”

Words of wisdom

As Fritz Keisler, the renowned violinist, put it, “If I don’t practise for a month, the audience can tell the difference. If I don’t practise for a week, my wife can tell the difference. If I don’t practise for a day, I can tell the difference.”

Ergo, when I practise everyday, I greatly enjoy the difference. I see the world in all its splendour from eyes made joyous. I don’t engage with life and always find that life engages with me because I’ve shed the heavy load of expectations. As does a body need a bath, so does a mind need a daily wash to keep it fresh.

Colour a few pages of a child’s ‘Jumbo Activity Book’. It’s amazing how the simple act resolves little disharmonies — perhaps it’s in watching a black and white sketch transform into a living coordinated scene of contrasting colours.

As does a body need exercise to give it strength and flexibility, so does a mind need exercise to give it stability and resilience. Give it good thoughts to workout on. Let it bend and stretch over a puzzle. Let it regain its balance on the broad platform of acceptance. You’ve nothing to lose except negativity, rigidity and cynicism. And as does a body need rest to repair and rebuild itself, so does a mind need patience and peace to heal and expand. Forgive, cease being hostile, desire nothing. And bask in purity, clarity, wideness and calm. Why waste so much energy trying to rearrange everybody and everything around us, when all we have to do is rearrange our minds and watch the world come lovingly, luminously alive exactly as it is meant to?