None of These Thoughts Are Even Mine!

Do we really understand what’s in our minds?

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Sometimes I think about my thoughts. Although they seem pretty intimate to me, I wonder if they’re really mine. It’s the same kind of feeling as when you watch a video of yourself and for a moment have the realization that this is you — but it doesn’t feel like you. It all feels out of place somehow. We didn’t ask for this. We didn’t create our minds, did we? And yet, here we are using them all the time.

I have yearnings, anxieties, preferences, and all kinds of emotions in there. I like cookies and cream ice cream but I don’t like mint chocolate chip at all. Silly, isn’t it? I have crushes on certain people and I am repelled by others. I was in love with one person five years ago but now I don’t feel that way about them at all. Why? I felt good yesterday but today I’m a little sad. What the heck is going on in here?

Where did these thoughts come from and why are they controlling me?

I have really started to wonder if any of these thoughts are mine. Like even a single one.

If I start to discover that none of them are mine — especially the wild emotions I feel that debilitate me — then I might start to have choices. Like, if I can observe them and see that they…