"What we think, we become. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world".

                    - Buddha 

The thing about life is, that the ideas and mantras we are taught as children always seem to come back to find us in the later years. Maybe its because the autonomy we seek leads us to stray from our parents wisdom, or maybe its just simply that what we hear sounds so trivial, but for some reason we tend to dismiss many childhood sayings without realizing their full power. As a child I was told "You can do whatever you want in life, so long as you put your mind to it". As a kid, I believed this. I dreamed of becoming an author, a librarian, a physicist, and a psychologist. I wanted to help people and learn and spread my knowledge as far as I could. I believed what my parents told me and I looked forward to single-handedly saving the world. As I got a little older, however, the cynicism that comes with the teenage yearstook over. The idea that mommy and daddy might have been talking out of their behinds was quite apparent to me. Clearly if everyone has the same dream, we can't all get what we want. It's just not possible.

 

But in denigrating the message my parents were giving me, by picking it apart and challenging its every thought, I was missing the big picture. In the grand scheme of life, we're all striving for happiness and by thinking positively that can be achieved. Our own thoughts have the power to change our course of events. We draw what we want towards us with the power of thought. If Buddha realized this years ago,and my parents obviously passed this down from generation to generation, why didn't I understand ? 

 

I guess I could blame it on lack of perspective, or of naivete. I was young and ruthless. I wanted to challenge and I wanted to criticize but now I want to embrace this teachings. If something is making a person unhappy, it is in their own power to change it, so that, my friends is what I am going to do.