I went to dinner last night with a group of people and a friend of a friend of mine insisted that she has lived in New York City for 13 years and it is just impossible to be mindful here. Given my own experience, I had to disagree. It may be challenging to be mindful here, but it is certainly not impossible. Mindfulness is a choice. And if we don’t choose mindfulness, then what do we choose? To be mindless? How sad.
This brief, and rather uncomfortable, exchange prompted me to think of a picture recently shown to me by my friend, Allan. Take a look at the image at the top of this post. The world “investment”. Now look a bit closer and turn the picture 180 degrees. “Speculation” magically appears. The image is exactly the same; what you see depends upon your point-of-view, literally and figuratively.
Brian and I had a tough conversation this past week. I was lamenting my student loans and the time I’m spending every day doing things that help earn my paycheck but don’t help to change the world. He was not having it. He raised a number of topics and anecdotes that are each worth their own post. I’ll be sharing them with you in posts this coming week because they were so helpful to me, even though they were tough to hear. I think they may help you, too, particularly if you are contemplating a new, scary beginning. As I left his office, there was just one statement that kept ringing in my mind over and over again. “Christa, you’re free if you want to be.”
I just finished reading Nelson Mandela’s new book Conversations with Myself, a collection of his personal papers that he has decided to release now that he is in the twilight of his life. Of the 26 years he spent in prison, he continually said that his mind was very far from his cell. In his mind, his thoughts, he was always free, even though physically he was servicing a life sentence. This idea helped me to reason that if he could feel free, then any of us can, too.
Freedom is all in the mind, and the mind can be changed. We can be mindful even in the mayhem of New York City; we can see an opportunity as speculation or investment; we can either lift ourselves up or keep ourselves down with our thoughts. If it is change we seek, on any scale, then we must first go inward and change our own minds.
Christa Avampato 