Careful What You Think

Theme song: Interplanet Janet

Most of us remember Schoolhouse Rock. Myself, I never got bored with it. I hankered for a hunk of cheese, I formed conjunctions, and I felt sad when the Bill had to stay on Capitol Hill.

I loved Interplanet Janet. After all, she's a galaxy girl, which meant, among other things, that her possibilities were my possibilities because I could relate directly to her.

This post, though, isn't about the importance of positive role models for girls (and everyone else for that matter who, maybe, doesn't find themselves reflected popularly enough in popular media), although it almost goes without saying that I do.

More accurately, this post is about a life-altering experience I had this past weekend that it's taking me a little bravery to share -- though knowing me the way you do you know I'll share away.

What happened was that I went to the Landmark Forum and it changed my life. That's right. You heard me correctly.

My reason for going to the Form was to reduce my resentment against my once upon a time husband and the father of my children. It worked. That's worth $560, easy.

But that's not all it did. It began the process of restoring my relationships with my mother, stepfather, and stepmother. It also turned my relationship with Laura right round, baby, right round like a record. Last but certainly not least, it changed my relationship with myself and everyone I know. Deep, right?

But even that is not what this post is about. This post is about something I learned at the Forum that might be obvious to you but wasn't obvious to me.

Here goes: Life can be pretty neatly divided into two categories. Category 1 is "What Happened" and Category 2 is "What You Think it Means".

I love, love, love categories!

By this I mean, I really love categories! They make life so much more fun when they aren't making things miserable.

Some of my friends (you know who you are) have said I have just a wee little tendency to overthink things. Which means that when Something Happens, I give it a lot of Meaning.

My story muscle is super ultra developed and I like to put everything into categories, mostly "Good" and "Bad".

Something happens, such as I feel tired in the morning when I wake up.

What happened was, I felt tired.

I do not leave it there, though. I create stories. Here are some of them:

• I should not have to get up.
• If I get up when I am tired I may get sick.
• I will not be able to do my work.
• If I cannot do my work I will starve.
• People will ridicule me because I will have failed to complete my work.
• I might get into a car accident because I was too tired.

They all sound kind of weird and absurd, but these are real thoughts I'm having. You may have noticed that I don't have positive thoughts about being tired, mostly because I already know that being tired is "Bad".

Since it is Bad, it causes anxiety. Be honest. Wouldn't you feel anxious if you knew you were destined for illness, ridicule, starvation, and car accidents?

Here is a more poignant example: A certain child whose name will not be mentioned because he or she doesn't like to be blogged about called him or herself a "slug" quite recently because he or she was not running "fast enough."

It starts young, people, it really does.

And how, people, does a person move and interact in the world if he or she is thinking of him or herself as a slug?

This is why the Buddha said we have to post a sentinel at each of our senses (and the sense of language is perhaps the most dangerous). According to Buddhism, thoughts are more powerful than actions because they cause actions.

My experience of the Forum was, in effect, that it brought Buddhism viscerally to life.

I never understood, until this weekend, how thoughts cause action. But they do. My perception of life, what I think it means, is caused by thoughts which are made out of language.

It's a wonderful thing to begin to separate out what happened from what I think about what happened. Once I make that crucial distinction, all sorts of possibilities arise.

All of which brings me back to Interplanet Janet. For me, then and now, she represents freedom and possibility as she zooms around the galaxy.

She reminds me of my childhood and that my thoughts about life started quite young -- and got a little calcified along the way.

Your Turn

What happened? And what do you think about it?