Mind and heart

The nights are getting longer and it is a time that can be given to us to think and we should take advantage of it. Thinking quietly, perhaps without looking at anything, letting thoughts flow, directing them slightly to give them shape, is a great human activity and in thinking we have a huge variety of files and folders to fill. Not all thoughts, in fact, are of the same kind and there are, we all know, that need to be put in the trash urgently and, if we could, also to be permanently deleted. But unfortunately they come back.

I prefer to leave them alone, while memories are thoughts to be continually put back in order and often to be restored, because they are influenced by our present moment. They become black, blue, pink or yellow depending on our health situation, mental state, relationships we had or the mood of the moment. Their effect is also varied: nostalgia, anger, joy, enthusiasm or indifference. Sometimes they are like blown matches, others like the moon and the sun, which according to the Bible are examples of endless duration. Yet memories can build or tear us down and discernment is the great work that, sitting quietly in the half-light, we must do. Because memories need to be worked on, to draw their true sap, to continue learning and knowing, to forgive or thank. The latter two are pillars of health of the mind and heart. Alongside memories, there are thoughts of the future, which must also be held well in hand, because they can play tricks: generate anxieties and fears, or create disappointing illusions. But thinking about the future is a useful and healthy activity to the extent that we know how to make the great virtue of humility act, which does not extinguish the impulses and does not drag us into a soap bubble. To think about the future so as to be filled with peace it is necessary, at least so I think, to think about it with the presence of the God that Jesus made us know: present, providing, author of freedom and good travel companion, the God-Love. that illuminates life; and in the light the future can be looked at with more serenity.

Of course, thinking can also create anxieties, blame memories, scruples. All of this has a filter that purifies the stream that threatens to overwhelm us with its murky water: the thought that we are not omnipotent, not through our fault, but by nature. So mistakes are normal and failures are starting points. There is no need to be ashamed of it, because this is a self-made process that can only end with conviction or an acquittal that does not want to look at reality and risks condemning others.
 
Thinking of others and thinking about how to be useful for others is a good exercise of mercy, one that does not take pity, but takes action to be useful. For this we need imagination and generosity, gift and fidelity. Like the Good Samaritan who takes care of the poor unfortunate, takes care of him, takes him to the hotel and is committed to the future. This is why in thinking we look at the ideas that arise in the head and that color our horizon. To be alive, ideas need to let their imagination run free, not to be afraid of the danger they can generate, the risk of not being accepted or assimilated by the group, and to fight for their freedom. Then the moment will come for discernment on the opportunity, which however needs a varied subject, not throttled at the first birth. Fear sterilizes ideas, pride makes them become monsters.
 
Thinking: this great activity of the human person, which leads him to touch the divine and to grow towards it to become similar to it in daily activity.

Cesare Falletti
NP october 2020