I hesitate before I step outside. Part of me is shivering with anticipation. Another part is wondering how I will stand, peering into the face of yet another proof of spring’s grand yes to joy. A bird’s song pulls me out, and I walk across the slope as if I am approaching the gates of heaven, the morning’s grass dewy beneath my feet and glistening in the sun. The air is warm. A hundred birds sing from the woods. Then there I am, peering down at a choir of narcissus that looks like a troupe of angels. And their silent song floats its gladness into my heart, and I sing along. Yes. Yes.
I ran across a description of the human mind as being made up of two parts, the Thinker and the Prover. I had never heard it put that way, and I liked the simplicity and accuracy of the idea.
Earlier in the week, I had been thinking about the phrase, “What you think about expands.” Now I had a simple explanation for how that happens.
Here’s how it works. You get caught in a loop where your Prover goes out to bring your Thinker evidence. And the evidence stimulates you to think that your thought is even truer than it was before. Then, because you’re looking at it with such renewed interest, the Prover brings you even more proof. And your thoughts – with their attendant emotions – intensify. And the Prover brings you more proof.
I sometimes call this a mental movie loop. It’s some story you keep playing over and over in your mind. Maybe if you focus on it enough, you imagine, what happened will somehow change. But at least in our current world, thoughts don’t change events that happened in the past, no matter how passionately we think them
Well then, you tell yourself, maybe if I keep letting the movie play, I’ll see why I’m feeling what I’m feeling and how absolutely justified I am.
Movie loops might spin around forever if some distraction didn’t intervene. Luckily, distractions abound. You can always take a reality break, check out what’s happening, take a breath, take a stretch, look around. (Personally, I like to ask myself three questions: “Who am I? Where am I? What was I doing?” They get me oriented in the here and now instantly.)
Sometimes we get so hooked into some emotionally charged movie-loop that we leap right back into it after it’s interrupted. The Thinker thinks the story line. The Prover brings evidence as proof.
But here’s an interesting thing about the Prover. Its only purpose is to bring you evidence for what your Thinker is thinking. And that means if you change your mind completely and start wondering if this other viewpoint might be true, the Prover will bring you evidence to support that thought. The Thinker is in charge. And here’s the key: You are in charge of the Thinker! You can choose what to think about.
We do that all the time, of course, decide where to put our attention.
When I was a little kid and I went to the movies, a whole string of short features would play before the main one started, and then more would play before the second one started. I always liked those short features. They let my attention move from place to place and my emotions to change with each little story.
These days, I think of looking out my window as a kind of “short feature.” It puts me in the present and lets me shift my thoughts and check in on what’s going on around me. I just look outside my window and tell myself what I see. And it’s different every time, and refreshing. It’s like a little vacation from whatever mental movie had my attention. And then I get to choose whether to resume what thoughts I was thinking or to entertain new ones.
And that reminds me of this wise line: “You can’t stop thoughts from coming to your door, but you don’t have to entertain them.” Remember about the Thinker and the Prover and decide what kinds of thoughts you would genuinely prefer to entertain. Because one way or another, the Prover will bring you proof.
Wishing you fine thoughts and refreshing “short features.”
After five straight days of sunshine, suddenly a bank of rolling clouds swept in, born on a wind that set the trees swaying with joy for the drama of it all. At my feet, the lush shoots just now rising quiver as if they sense some wonder in the air. Their first rain! And, oh my, how they glistened in the afternoon sun after the rain had passed!
One of the things I love most about spring’s flowers (along with their tenderness, and how heedless they are of anyone’s opinion) is the way they paint their absolute joy. You, for instance, with your simple white petals, shooting seeds on red stalks from your rosy red heart. How can I look at you and not feel delight?
A single pink hyacinth opened today in my garden, luring me with its irresistible perfume to come close, closer. Lose yourself in her the air said. I could do nothing else. And I cannot describe the pure cool joy of her. It simply transcends words. But imagine a scent so heavenly that you want to breathe it in forever.
Late in the afternoon, actually just before evening, as the sun sinks behind the western hill, the treetops on the east end of the southern slopes, their buds swollen with life, glow in the golden light, their crowns looking like pastel clouds afloat in the springtime sky,
Sometimes when I stop to look the thought comes to me that we, you and I, may be among the last ever to see living nature in its context through purely human eyes. Really, that’s why I stop, why I trade moments of my life for the sight of these blossoms. We could be, you know, among the very last ones.
Spring beauties cover the hillside now, emerging from the layers of last year’s leaves to dance beneath the sun. In the right light, you might think for a moment that it had snowed. But no; it is only these tiny, bright flowers. Only this message of undeniable joy. Only life appearing. Regardless of the odds.
That the branches of bare trees erupt with bursting buds simply because, so they tell us, the planet’s axis has tipped toward the sun, is one wonder. A larger one, it seems to me, is that we walk past, heedless, hardly noticing such marvels at all. What a fantastic world, where miracles occur in such profusion that we barely give them a ho-hum!
I was settled at my keyboard with the day’s chores behind me, relaxed and gazing at the orange and rose and turquoise sunset outside my window. My mind was leisurely scrolling through random topics when it paused on a shred of lyrics from the Moody Blues’ album, “Threshold of a Dream.” I hadn’t heard the Moody Blues in years!
I could remember some of the opening lines, but one phrase eluded me. So I zipped over to You Tube and listened to the track. I found what I was searching for, and as a bonus I got to hear one of my all-time favorite lines: “Face piles of trials with smiles. It riles them to believe that you perceive the web they weave. And keep on thinking free.” Good advice.
I slipped into a dream of my own while the song was playing. (I’ll tell you about it another day.) And when I came back to the music from my dream, I discovered several songs had played without my consciously hearing them. The one that was playing now was “The Minstrel’s Song.”
I listened, and the lyrics put into words exactly what I wanted to say to you today. I knew what it was; I felt it so clearly, but it just wasn’t taking shape in my mind. For one thing, it’s Easter. And my mind was contemplating all the interpretations of its meaning and symbolism, all the memories it evoked. And for another thing, it’s spring, and I’m enraptured by its wondrous unfolding. The mix of emotions I was feeling was wide and deep. And all at once, there was this happy song, capturing it so nicely.
I smiled as I listened. I pictured the minstrel wearing the harlequin costume of a joker, an April fool if you will, prancing down a mountain path, heedless of anything but the feeling of delight that filled him. But that’s just a disguise. You can imagine him any way that suits you. What’s important is his song.
Here’s how the first verse describes him: “Words, a simple song a minstrel sings, a way of life in his eyes. Hear the morning call of waking birds when they are singing, bringing love. Love. Everywhere love is all around.”
I thought about the joy I feel in the morning when I take seed out to the birds and they come to my song and we chirp at each other for a bit, and about how grateful I am to begin each day in their company, and how it feels like such a sweet breath of love.
Then the lyrics say that all the nations hear the minstrel’s song as he walks by in their lives. It touches us all. It sings to all of our hearts. And all we have to do is listen. “Listen to the one who sings of love. Follow our friend, our wandering friend. Listen to the one who sings of love. Everywhere, love is around . . . around . . . around.”
That was it exactly, just what I wanted to say. Listen for the love around you, because truly, it’s everywhere. It’s dancing through your heart this very minute.
And that’s the story of how this letter came to be.
Wishing you a week filled with the Minstrel’s song.
