You're going to make the decision of what you want
to do with the information that you're being given.
I have no power over you.
You have the power and you need to know that.
We think so often that we are helpless,
but we're not helpless because we have our minds.
We have our minds and you shape and mold
your life from moment to moment
by your thoughts and your beliefs and your attitudes.
And you also want to know that you
really are important to this world.
You might say, well, I really don't do anything,
but you are just the fact that you're alive is important
and your life has meaning.
It really does.
And you can contribute to the peace and the
harmony of this planet just by using your mind.
Now some people get involved politically and some people
march and some people do Peace Corps and some people
help feed the homeless and do all sorts of things.
And that's fine, but you can also contribute
to the peace and harmony of the planet.
Just as much by how you use your mind.
SLOW DOWN, THINK DEEPLY
"With my sighted eye I see what’s before me,
and with my unsighted eye I see what’s hidden. —ALICE WALKER
In the intro sequence of the beloved children’s show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,
the first interior shot does not show the host.
Instead, in the beat before Fred Rogers appears on the screen
singing his cheerful song about being a good neighbor,
viewers see a traffic light, blinking yellow.
For more than thirty years and for nearly a thousand episodes,
this subtle piece of symbolism opened the show.
If as a hint, it went over the heads of most people watching,
viewers were still primed to get the message.
Because whether Fred Rogers was speaking on camera,
playing in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe with King Friday the Puppet,
or singing one of his trademark songs,
just about every frame of the show seemed to say:
Slow down. Be considerate. Be aware.
As a child at Latrobe Elementary School in Pennsylvania,
Fred Rogers had been a victim of vicious bullying.
Kids picked on him because of his weight
and because he was sensitive about it.
It was a horrible experience,
but this pain spurred his groundbreaking work in public television.
“I began a lifelong search for what is essential,”
he said about his childhood, “what it is about my neighbor that doesn’t meet the eye.”
He even framed a print of that idea on the wall of his production studio in Pittsburgh,
a snippet from one of his favorite quotes: What’s essential is invisible to the eye.
That is: Appearances are misleading.
First impressions are too.
We are disturbed and deceived by what’s on the surface,
by what others see.
Then we make bad decisions, miss opportunities,
or feel scared or upset.
Particularly when we don’t slow down and take the time to really look.
Think about Khrushchev on the other side of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
What provoked his incredible overreach?
A poor reading of his opponent’s mettle.
A rush to action.
Shoddy thinking about how his own actions would be interpreted on the world stage.
It was a nearly fatal miscalculation, as most rush jobs are.
Epictetus talked about how the job of a philosopher is to take our impressions
—what we see, hear, and think—and put them to the test.
He said we needed to hold up our thoughts and examine them,
to make sure we weren’t being led astray by appearances
or missing what couldn’t be seen by the naked eye.
Indeed, it is in Stoicism and Buddhism
and countless other schools that we find the same analogy:
The world is like muddy water.
To see through it, we have to let things settle.
We can’t be disturbed by initial appearances,
and if we are patient and still, the truth will be revealed to us.
That’s what Mr. Rogers taught children to do
—starting a crucial habit as early as possible in their lives.
In countless episodes, Rogers would take a topic—
whether it was self-worth or how crayons were made,
divorce or having fun—and walk his young viewers through what was really happening and what it meant.
He seemed to naturally know how a kid’s mind would process information,
and he’d help them clear up understandable confusion or fears.
He taught empathy and critical reasoning skills.
He reassured his viewers that they could figure just about anything out
if they took the time to work through it—with him, together.
It’s a message he shared with adults too.
“Just think,” Rogers once wrote to a struggling friend.
“Just be quiet and think. It’ll make all the difference in the world.”
There is, on the surface, a contradiction here.
On the one hand, the Buddhists say we must empty our minds to be fully present.
We’ll never get anything done if we are paralyzed by overthinking.
On the other hand, we must look and think and study deeply
if we are ever to truly know
(and if we are to avoid falling into the destructive patterns that harm so many people).
In fact, this is not a contradiction at all. It’s just life.
We have to get better at thinking, deliberately and intentionally, about the big questions.
On the complicated things. On understanding what’s really going on with a person,
or a situation, or with life itself.
We have to do the kind of thinking
that 99 percent of the population is just not doing,
and we have to stop doing the destructive thinking
that they spend 99 percent of their time doing.
The eighteenth-century Zen master Hakuin was highly critical of teachers
who believed that enlightenment was simply a matter of thinking nothing.
Instead, he wanted his students to think really, really hard.
This is why he assigned them perplexing kōans like
“What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
and “What did your face look like before you were born?”
and “Does the dog have the Buddha nature?”
These questions defy easy answers, and that’s the point.
By taking the time to meditate on them deeply,
in some cases for days and weeks or even years,
students put their mind in such a clarified state
that deeper truths emerge, and enlightenment commences
(and even if they don’t get all the way there, they are stronger for having tried).
“Suddenly,” Hakuin promised his students,
“unexpectedly your teeth sink in. Your body will pour with cold sweat.
At the instant, it will all become clear.”
The word for this was satori—an illuminating insight when the inscrutable is revealed,
when an essential truth becomes obvious and inescapable.
Couldn’t we all use a bit more of that?
Well, no one gets to satori going a million miles a minute.
No one gets there by focusing on what’s obvious,
or by sticking with the first thought that pops into their head.
To see what matters, you really have to look.
To understand it, you have to really think.
It takes real work to grasp what is invisible to just about everyone else.
This will not only be advantageous to your career and your business,
but it will also help you find peace and comfort.
There is another great insight from Fred Rogers,
which now goes viral each time there is another unspeakable tragedy.
“Always look for the helpers,”
he explained to his viewers who were scared or disillusioned by the news.
“There’s always someone who is trying to help.
. . . The world is full of doctors and nurses, police and firemen, volunteers, neighbors and friends
who are ready to jump in to help when things go wrong.”
Make no mistake—this was not some glib reassurance.
Rogers, building on advice from his own mother when he was a child,
had managed to find comfort and goodness inside an event that would provoke
only pain and anger and fear in other people.
And he figured out how to communicate it in a way that continues to make the world a better place
long after his death.
So much of the distress we feel comes from reacting instinctually
instead of acting with conscientious deliberation.
So much of what we get wrong comes from the same place.
We’re reacting to shadows.
We’re taking as certainties impressions we have yet to test.
We’re not stopping to put on our glasses and really look.
Your job, after you have emptied your mind,
is to slow down and think.
To really think, on a regular basis.
. . . Think about what’s important to you.
. . . Think about what’s actually going on.
. . . Think about what might be hidden from view.
. . . Think about what the rest of the chessboard looks like.
. . . Think about what the meaning of life really is.
The choreographer Twyla Tharp provides an exercise for us to follow:
Sit alone in a room and let your thoughts go wherever they will.
Do this for one minute. . . .
Work up to ten minutes a day of this mindless mental wandering.
Then start paying attention to your thoughts to see if a word or goal materializes.
If it doesn’t, extend the exercise to eleven minutes, then twelve, then thirteen . . .
until you find the length of time you need to ensure that something interesting will come to mind.
The Gaelic phrase for this state of mind is “quietness without loneliness.”
If you invest the time and mental energy, you’ll not only find what’s interesting
(or your next creative project), you’ll find truth.
You’ll find what other people have missed.
You’ll find solutions to the problems we face
—whether it’s insight to the logic of the Soviets and their missiles in Cuba,
or how to move your business forward, or how to make sense of senseless violence.
These are answers that must be fished from the depths.
And what is fishing but slowing down?
Being both relaxed and highly attuned to your environment?
And ultimately, catching hold of what lurks below the surface and reeling it in?