Religion for me is a feeling I sometimes need to get back to.

Innocent Heart

If I had to explain how I learned to control my body while understanding its emotional depth, I would explain it through self-awareness.

Kids don’t care when they walk next to a terrace full of people. When you are 16, you do. You become self-aware. Aware of how much space your body uses.

When you get older, you also become aware that how you look at life changes all the time. And that your own emotional state also changes all the time. This process never stops.

A lot of religions are about this process of growing up. When they were bitten by the snake, they suddenly became self-aware, aware of their own nakedness. Buddha never understood that self-awareness is the arrow in time that moves forward.

I like to see thinking as an art form. It’s super interesting that it never stops. The better you get, the more you enjoy thinking and your own thoughts, because you simply find them beautiful, even if you don’t do anything with them. It reflects the way you grew up and how you overcame obstacles. You look kindly at things that used to bother you. You respect your own thoughts. You understand why they are there, and that they come from an innocent heart.

Head Full of Thoughts

Let’s say you have a head with room for a thousand thoughts. You watch the news 24/7.

How does your head look?

Maybe like this:
War
Hunger
That specific conflict in that specific region
That other conflict in that other region

You don’t have a lot of room left for sweet, positive things—like thoughts about baking cakes, or your pet.

In my opinion, this also goes wrong in psychiatry a lot. It’s good to focus on problems, but you’ll get a lot of thoughts about focusing on your problems.

You also need to fill your head with things that have nothing to do with psychiatry. Positive things, for instance.

Look, I don’t know what my next thought is about. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it has to do with ice cream. Great news considering all I could think about a few years ago was very dark stuff.