What happens in your head?

What happens in your head?

I wonder about other people’s internal dialogues. 

I remember when I first heard a friend say, “just because I think something, doesn’t make it true.”

NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! Say it isn’t so!!

I nodded my head slowly to that one as the light gradually came on during the following weeks. 

I’ve always loved the verse about being transformed by renewing your mind. It feels so hopeful. I like getting better. I like changing for the good. A lot of problems have come because I believed something that came up in my brain.

Have you ever been hit with something you thought was ridiculous, but someone else believed it? And no matter how hard you argued, they held to their “silly” thought? I struggle when people talk about UFO’s and Bigfoot, although for a while I pretended to believe in faeries because of a course I took in university and where Madeleine L'Engle (in a book) encouraged us to “believe something new every day.” It was hard, but I really talked as if I believed in them (only to a select few people, so as to not seem crazy). 

Our heads are huge. What we believe really changes everything. 

I played basketball in highschool and university. I played on provincial and local all-star teams. I pursued perfect form. I was disciplined. A friend said I played like a “mercenary.” At the time I had to look the word up. All I wanted was to do everything right. Then there would be these kids who would show up at camp or at a game. . . they were... unorthodox. They looked silly. Their form was far from perfection. But they had something about them.. I wonder if it was joy. Pleasure. Everything they did was “wrong” (according to me), but their shots went in, and they LOOKED LIKE THEY WERE HAVING FUN! 

It made me so mad. If you did the math, what they were doing should NOT have worked. But it did. These people were relentless. Full of energy. A missed shot didn’t discourage them. Not even an air ball. A complete shameful miss... didn’t deter them. Off they went, fully engaged, playing the game. Ready to try again. 

Had that been me, Oh my. Anger. Frustration. Paragraphs of internal shaming. Tunnel vision. Definitely no joy. 

I have been known to get mad at people who are happy. I’m sorry. Sometimes I would look at them and think, “You are just not perfect enough to be happy.. like look at you! YOU ARE NOT PERFECT? HOW CAN YOU BE HAPPY?”

It made me jealous. 

I got good grades (sometimes better grades than the happy people). It didn’t make me happy. 

I won awards (some that the happy people didn’t win). It didn’t make me happy. 

I got opportunities I ached for (opportunities the happy people didn’t get). It didn’t make me happy. 

I think it’s weird and backward, but I don’t think anything will make me happy unless I’m are already happy. Happenings are just overflow, never the foundation. And I think maybe the word I should be using is “joy” but it seems too overused to be right.

I think what makes people “be” happy, is what happens in their heads, not what happens in their lives. 

I think we all know this, or have been told this, but I bet how much we buy into it,  separates the happy from the grumpy. 

Sometimes I am afraid that if I am happy, it lets life and people off the hook. Sometimes I am afraid that if I choose to be happy, that it is somehow equal to not caring.  

A while ago I was reading Joyce Meyers and she talked about the “normal Christian mind” and what it should sound like. In a word, peace. No chatter. No fear. No nagging thoughts. No chorus of discouragement. 

Can you imagine a mind like a white page? A mind observing without judging? 

I think a mind of peace might be the birthplace of joy.  It’s starting a thought without the deficit of negativity.  Ready to embrace. Nothing to overcome. 

I worked through a lot of chatter today. Less than before, more than I will tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. This is my hope.. my belief. Eleanor Roosevelt said, “You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.”  There are certain people, I don’t know why, but I actually carry them around in my head, predicting their thoughts and responses to my words and actions.  Imagine a mind free of these shaking heads, clucking tongues, and disappointed sighs. 

Happiness might be the freedom to use, enjoy, and engage in what I have, who I am, unaware, uncaring, not noticing what I don’t have, and what I’m not. I don’t totally know. But I am pursuing peace, believing it is just the beginning of great things for me.