Thought pollution: The root cause of all ills

[ This is an essay I submitted for 'Heartfulness essay writing competition']

We live in a time where everyone has something or the other to say about everyone else. We live in a time where we are told to have only ill thoughts about our so-called enemies. We live in a time where more than 264 million people of all ages suffer from depression, globally. The common link between all this is 'thought'. I consider a thought to be like a snowflake. Just like how each snowflake has a unique shape, similarly each thought is different and has various

consequences. But even if one such

snowflake becomes sharp enough, the

whole snowfall becomes dangerous. Our

thoughts work in the same way. You just require one such thought to pollute your

entire mind with unnecessary things and

when this reaches a limit, we become

self destructive machine.

Now in this current situation, where the

Coronavirus has taken a toll on the entire

race of humanity, I believe that most of

us have come to understand the huge

role our thoughts play in deciding our

life’s course. Due to the lockdown, all the

people are stuck at their homes the

entire day . In such a case where one is

left with his/her thoughts for a period of

almost 7 months, one can imagine the

number of thoughts that goes through a

person’s mind. According to the article

published by National Science Foundation in 2005, it was found that an

average person has about 12,000 to

60,000 thought per day. Out of those

thousands of thoughts, 80% were

negative and about 95% were the same

repetitive thoughts which we had the day

before. This clearly shows us that,

whether we accept it or not, we spend

more than half of our time daily in just

thinking about negative things. And why

do we think negative things? Well, in

most cases it’s because we don’t want to

feel bad about ourselves. Now imagine

the heights we could reach if we used this time in doing something productive and useful. Another interesting study by

Cornell University says that 85% of the things we worry about never actually

happen!! We are spending more than

half of the time of our lives fearing about

things that have a very less chance of

happening. Of course one cannot

completely stop thinking about negative

things or worrying, but if we wish to then

we can reduce the impact all these

thoughts have on our life. Thinking ill

about others has never lead anyone to

success. And why would it? A person who wants something bad to happen with someone else will be simply wasting his own time. Because the other person won’t even be bothered by it. Similarly when we gossip about someone or spread rumours about someone, it has no impact on other’s lives except those who are gossiping. We rarely stop to think about all this. What we do and what we think, eventually impacts only us and no one else. So why not use our time efficiently; let’s spend more time with our loved ones, let’s read books and watch movies and get a look at everything with a whole new perspective, let’s stop for a while and introspect, and most important of all, let’s spend time with ourselves, take care of ourselves and live a life full of joy and peace.