“If you want to change your mind and stop doing something you don’t want to do anymore, it’s simple, you just close your eyes and tell your brain, ‘Okay, stop doing that. And that’s it. It’s easy.”
I looked at Gentry. The small wonder of a five-year-old boy who has more sense than most adults I’ve ever met. I mean, that was genius, was it not? If you want to change, you just simply tell yourself to stop doing the thing you want to stop doing.
Oh, to be young and innocent and, well, simple. I hope Gentry always stays this way. Untethered to the complications of humanity. Set apart from rest. That he never opens escape hatches which only lead to more harm. Why is it that we love to hurt ourselves?
I’ve considered using Gentry’s suggested approach to changing my mind, thought about closing my eyes and telling my brain to “just stop doing that.” But there’s always the “but” … but then what will I do instead? Maybe I’m just a pessimist, covered with too many barnacles of adulthood. Maybe I’m too stubborn to change the neural pathways which took decades and decades of plowing and digging to create. Can it really be that simple?
Next time I see Gentry, I think I’ll ask him to elaborate. Like, how do I fill up the empty space that changing my mind left behind. I don’t know if he’ll get it, being just five years old. Or maybe he will. Maybe one day he’ll write a book on the basic tenets of changing one’s mind. Maybe he’ll be a well-known mind-changer, opening up fields of vision for those struggling to simply change their minds. I don’t know. I don’t know much of anything really, except that if it were that easy to change one’s mind, we’d all be doing it, right?
Yeah, that’s what I’ll ask Gentry next time I see him: what exactly do I do with all of this road behind me, the ones which led to my current state of mind? Do I just build a bridge over them and keep moving forward?
Perhaps I’m over-complicating this whole thing. I do have the tendency to over-think every single thought until I’ve lost track of where the original thought started … I should just close my eyes and tell myself to stop doing that. Let’s give it a try … Eyes closed. Deep breath in. Exhale. Okay, brain, stop doing that. Open eyes. Done. See how simple that was? Yeah, Gentry is a genius. I have a feeling he’s going to win the Nobel Prize one day.
This piece was derived from a ten-minute writing prompt in Nancy Peacock’s writing class.
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