Change
of Mind
“The
greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives
by altering their attitudes of mind.”
William
James
Whether
this is a strictly a Southern euphemism or not I don’t know, but I hear it a
lot: “That’s not how I was raised.” Or more classically Southern, “My
mama didn’t raise me to behave like that.” Either way, it indicates that
certain characteristics are cast in stone, unchangeable, beyond negotiation. If
our family of origin thought a certain way, and taught us to think that way too,
it’s as though we cannot challenge it. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Our mind is one thing that is enormously changeable.
Rules
are broken all the time—beliefs are edited when new information becomes
available. Albert Einstein is a case in point. He won the Nobel Prize for his
work on relativity—because he broke the rules of physics. According to Jill
Badonsky, “His deviation out of existing parameters proves that rules can be
broken and that enormous advances in science are possible.” (The Nine Modern
Day Muses and a Bodyguard, p.73) We can change our minds; we can expand
beyond our family of origin’s protocol, and frankly, we need to. Every
generation needs to push the human psyche forward—away from self-serving compartmentalized
thinking and toward open appreciation for unknown possibilities. It is said
that we use only a small percentage of our brain capacity, so we have room for
expansion.
Until
we begin to think deeply about all our choices, confront all our prejudices,
and scrutinize our attitudes, we will be stuck in hand-me-down thinking. It is
fear that keeps us stuck. Fear limits our ability to expand—fear of the
unknown, of change, and of losing control. When we open the door to all the
possibilities, we also open it to things we can’t control— and to the
possibility that changing our minds may mean we must also change our way of life.
Quickly, we shut the door and fall back into old ways of thinking.
In my
one lifetime, the discovery of antibiotics, vaccines, and chemotherapy has
revolutionized medicine. We’ve gone from handwritten (in cursive) letters to
email and texting. We’ve gone from one-car-families to the space age, to individual’s
launching rockets to travel to the moon and beyond. We’ve gone from telephones
attached to the wall by a cord, to cell phones that can reach across the planet
no matter where you are. We wouldn’t have gotten here if some of us hadn’t thrown caution to the wind, followed
our hunches, broken through the assumption of “You can’t do that!” and just kept
going.
We are
meant to challenge current wisdom—especially if it excludes half of us by setting up an impenetrable privileged class and irredeemable underclass. Each of us is
a sovereign being, full of potential. It is our choice as to whether we remove
the barriers to full expression of that potential or build them higher. You can
change your mind and so can I. It’s a privilege and a responsibility to help
move humanity toward the light of understanding.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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