I went for a short walk the other day and ended up walking 4.5 miles. Some of the walk was up very steep hills and as a result I got a very sore back. The following day I purchased a ton of stone to fill in some pot holes. That didn’t help my back, Now I find I can bend down, but it is very difficult to stand up again!
When on my walk, as is often the way, my mind wanders. Thoughts travel into my brain and then travel out again. I tend to concentrate on the sounds and the scenery that surround me. But thoughts keep creeping in and disturbing my concentration on the sounds of the birds and the vision of the scenery.
Whilst walking I recalled that there is a presupposition that ‘thoughts are not facts’. I pondered on this for a while. The result of my pondering was that I concluded that ‘thoughts are just figments of our imagination’.
We remember things from the past but in reality it is our interpretation of past events that we remember, not the past events. Hence it is our imagination.
We consider our future in our mind and imagine what will happen, but we don’t know, because it hasn’t happened.
So our thoughts are not facts, they are a figment of our imagination, of how we interpret the past or how we envision the future.
We don’t know what the future will bring. We don’t know what actions that we took in the past that have resulted in the present. Because we are not the only influence on the present. There are all the other influences from the past that create the present. The actions of all the other people that are involved. The results of the actions of all the past doings. The weather, nature, our mistakes, other’s mistakes, the influence of the universe, physics, chemistry, biology, history, sociology, philosophy.
What it comes down to is that which others have said before: We cannot control our destiny. There are too many influences affecting it. But if a butterfly flaps its wings in Guatemala that will influence the storm we experience today.
So, be like a sailing boat. Use the tides and winds of life. Move and bend as the situation dictates. Accept what is and be.