They are our feelings. They are our opinions. They are our thoughts. They are us.
I've been doing a lot of thinking and reflecting lately on life and how it plays out before us. It never really ever seems to go just how we want it to go. That twist of life affects how we think, how we feel, and how we view things. Think about the movie Inception. One small thought, that life wasn't real, but a dream, changed the whole world. That change played a huge part in changing how another life was seen and lived. That in turn affected many other lives, changing how they thought and felt and believed. Those lives changed others. The effects spread. How we view life, how we feel, how we act based on our feelings and our thoughts and our opinions changes so much of the world around us, even if we don't recognize it right away. The changes are sometimes very subtle, barely impacting the world around us. Sometimes they are large and dramatic, having a broad, sweeping effect that is impossible to notice. They are there.
Perhaps the scariest of all of this is the effect that our thoughts and feelings and opinions have on ourselves. We rarely ever think to stop and look back at ourselves and see what we are doing to ourselves with how we think an feel and believe. What are we turning ourselves into? What are we creating out of the clay that is us? How will we be shaped when we are finished with this process? When will we be finished? Are we ever fully shaped?
Too often we give ourselves the excuse that we are too influenced by others, that they change how we are feeling or thinking or believing. We don't to recognize that we are the masters of ourselves. We choose how we will be. We find escapes, places to put the blame. We decide that we feel in a bad mood because our neighbor said something silly that we decided to take offensively, even though we knew that no offense was intended. Our thoughts are turned to other things because of something we saw while driving to the store. Our opinions are swayed because the TV tells us what is going on and how we should feel about life.
Scared yet? If not, then I can only guess that you have one of two views: either you are already confident in your control over your thoughts and feelings and emotions and are reading this with a small smile, or perhaps more likely, you are looking for something to pass the thoughts in your head off to. Something in you is looking at this and recognizing perhaps something of a truth, but doesn't want to accept it, so you find a way to pass it off to something or someone else. Maybe it's my fault for putting a thought in your head. But will you decide to take responsibility for what it blooms into? Will any of us take that responsibility?
