Member-only story
The quality of your thoughts determines the quality of your life.
Why fixing your thoughts is more important than fixing your circumstances
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There is a man, probably in his 30s, sitting across from me in the rickshaw, phone pressed to his ear, explaining to someone why everything is terrible. The weather is shit (it actually hasn't rained for two days). His boss is an idiot (that might be true). His back hurts. His wife is crazy. The government is screwing him over.
I watch him, fascinated. We are in the same vehicle, breathing the same air, heading down the same street. But he’s in hell, and I’m having a pretty good morning.
His face is twisted into something between disgust and defeat. The woman next to him shifts away slightly. Then he finally hangs up.
The woman sitting with us gets off now, and a minute later, a kid with his mother gets on with two balloons. The man glares at it like it’s a threat to national security. The kid, maybe four years old, looks at this man and offers him one of the strings.
For a second, I see him consider it. Then he shakes his head, goes back to his phone, back to scrolling through whatever feeds his particular flavor of misery.
