Thoughts are like 'Uninvited guests'
Thoughts are like 'Uninvited guests'
It is a weekend evening. You are sitting in your living room with your family, enjoying a popular TV show. The doorbell rings, and you open the door, wondering who is disturbing your happy hour. Waiting at the door is a known person whom you did not invite. He is not a bad person, but definitely not welcome at this time, especially when you are watching a good TV show. But you feel obligated to invite him, though internally you hate his visit at this time. So you invite him in, and he sits down on the sofa. You half- watch the TV show and half-engage with the guest, trying to be nice. It is tea time, and the guest joins the family for tea and snacks. He is happily settled in the room and enjoying it. After some time, the guest excuses himself and goes out, saying he will be back soon.
In a few minutes, he comes back, bringing his wife with him (she was waiting in the car outside). She, the guest -2, is also a known person and happily joins the company, further distracting you from the TV show. You feel uncomfortable, but being a nice person (or meek person?), you offer hospitality to her. Both guests are well settled in your living room. You practically give up the TV show. Now the guest -2 excuses herself, saying she will be back soon. (You might have guessed what happened next!)
She comes back with their three children (they were sitting in the car outside). You can now write the rest of this story. The grandchildren (guests X, Y, and Z) have also been brought in. Frustrated, you switch off the TV show. You are a very nice person, but fuming inside, trying to be nice to the three generations of guests. You wonder why your happy TV time was spoiled, and how you got into this mess.
You could have saved yourself if you had handled the first guest differently. When he entered the room, you could continue focusing on the TV show and not respond to his attempts to engage you in conversation. He would feel unwelcome and leave in a few minutes on some pretext. But your values don't allow you to do this.
If you are tactful, you could respond differently on seeing him at the door. You could politely but firmly tell him that you were working from home on an important office assignment (a lie, of course) and you would call him as soon as you were free. He would leave immediately. It is similar to what you do when talking on the phone with one person, and another person’s call comes. You promptly tell the second caller that you are currently answering a call and will call him back as soon as possible.
If you were not smart enough in preventing the entry of the first guest and he is sitting in the room, you could have rescued the situation. You could have told him a different lie, saying that you had to go out for a concert, movie, or whatever, and ask him to please visit another day, by calling you a day before. You would be tactfully walking him to the door.
Most thoughts are uninvited thoughts (UIT’s). We don’t invite the thoughts. They enter the mind without an appointment or invitation. They don’t wait outside and ring the bell, seeking permission to enter, as the mind space does not have walls or doors. Unless a thought pops into the mind, you can’t see what kind of thought it is – positive or negative, useful or useless, relevant or irrelevant.
But you are not helpless. As soon as a thought enters, you can see its nature. If it is a thought that can help you, you can allow it to linger and grow its family of related thoughts. If not, you can engage your mind on something soothing, like ‘focusing on breathing’, and ignore the useless thought. When that thought does not get any attention or response from you, it leaves quickly.
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