There is a woman and she wakes up in the morning to the sound of her alarm clock. She presses snooze 3 times and then, finally steps out of bed. She doesn’t take any time to delight in the day, to think of all the goodness that is to follow. instead she thinks about what to eat, the places need to be first, the things and people she needs to avoid today. She gets upset because she ran out of milk; no coffee. She gets upset over a blemish on her skin. She spends her time thinking about when would be the best time to pick up the milk, and which face cream to buy. She is always rushing, and always late. She spends a lot of time on public transport, trying to get somewhere, trying not to miss her next train or next meeting. She arrives at work and her mind suddenly begins to fill with information. This information allows her to create a business-like facial expression. This information makes sure she can do the work that she gets paid to do. She spends the whole day floating aimlessly in this “information” but she is actually thinking about her ex, her girlfriends and her colleagues – and she is getting angrier and angrier at them too. She’s angry at the things they did, or didn’t do, what they said or what they didn’t say enough of. She thinks about them the whole day. If she happens to run into one of these people, she seems nonchalant and even friendly, but her conscience is not clear. It is deeply guilty because she has been discussing them all day. She smiles, but she is unsettled, and she realizes that neither seeing them or thinking about them makes her happy at all. She listens to everything that is going on around her.
On her commute home she puts on the mask of a happy and successful woman. But she has no real peace of mind – because she’s busy thinking about her problems, her problems with love, her make up, or she’s looking at catalogs and magazines for new, beautiful items and products that she thinks might create a miracle in her life. She goes home and cleans the house. She thinks she is relaxing when she makes her dinner and watches television. Even when she goes to bed, she finds it hard to sleep because she is thinking about her daily problems and is stuck in the same mental rut as she always has been. It’s only when her brain gets absolutely tired, that it switches off, with the same mundane static playing in the background.
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This is what life is like for most of us. We believe we are good, but in reality, we spend only a few seconds truly thinking about goodness. How can we believe that we are living a good life if we spend such little time thinking of good things.