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“The information you consume each day is the soil from which your future thoughts are grown.”
Two Sentences from 5,000 Word Essay
In October of 2001, an article was published in an obscure journal called the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, or QLRS. The article is titled “In Search of the Lotus Land” by Singaporean novelist Hwee Hwee Tan.
It runs over 5,000 thousand words and covers a range of topics from travel and spirituality to humanity’s quest for meaning, but there are two sentences from the very middle of the essay that will live on in my mind forever. About halfway through, she says:
“That’s the profound truth: you are what your mind looks at. You are what you contemplate.”
You are what you contemplate.
Hwee Hwee grew up in Singapore, attended college in England, and then moved to New York after graduation—giving her three extensive but vastly different cultural experiences.
It wasn’t long into her stay in New York that she started becoming aware of how the city’s design had a substantially negative effect on her. (“Sometimes I wonder if Satan had New York City in mind when he was designing Hell,” she writes.)
But it wasn’t until a trip to Italy—separated from the “dark canyon” of skyscrapers and daily descensions underground “into the black belly of the subway”—that the appropriate words to describe this feeling materialized. Sitting for hours in front of a breathtakingly beautiful fountain in the Borghese Gardens of Rome, she began feeling unexplainable joy and a soothing of the heart wrought from the simple yet profound act of an unbroken gaze. It dawned on her:
“You are what your mind looks at. You are what you contemplate.”
Hers is a reflection on the soul-shaping power of aesthetics, but it’s implications are broad. After encountering this idea for the first time, I started noticing it everywhere.
Marcus Aurelius in 170 AD:
“Your mind will take shape of what you frequently hold in your thoughts, for the human spirit is colored by such impressions.”
Dhammapada, 5th century BC:
“What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is the creation of our mind.”
Saint Paul, 57 AD:
“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
Dallas Willard, 2002:
“As we first turned away from God in our thoughts, so it is in our thoughts that the first movements toward the renovation of the heart occur. Thoughts are the place where we can and must begin to change.”
Across centuries, great minds have agreed on this simple idea: your character is a lag measure of your thoughts.
Show me your thoughts today and I’ll show you your character tomorrow.
And if your character—who you are becoming—is the most important thing about you, it’s hard to understate the gravity of this insight.
In grade school, we all learned a basic math concept with a fancy name called the Transitive Property of Equality. It says that if two things are equal to a third thing, they are also equal to each other. You’ve most likely heard it stated as, “If A equals B, and B equals C, then A equals C.” (As a formula: If A = B, and B = C, then A = C.)
Instead of applying this property to quantities, we can insert concepts to illustrate the idea above. Let’s replace each one:
A —> “The most important thing about you”
B —> “Who you are becoming”
C —> “What you are contemplating”
Using these variables (and “is” instead of an equal sign), this is what emerges:
IF the most important thing about you is who you are becoming, AND who you are becoming is what you are contemplating, THEN the most important thing about you is what you are contemplating.
When I read Hwee Hwee Tan’s essay, I was confronted with a colossal truth that I had danced around but never fully submitted to. It’s a clarifying call to action:
The most difficult and most important task of your life is to control what you think about.
Where your attention goes, so goes your mind, body, and soul.
It’s precisely why the digital discipline journey is no small matter. We are being continuously formed by our thoughts, and our thoughts are being continuously shaped by our mental inputs.
What happens if we relax our guard on these inputs?
Algorithms dictate your thoughts. Shallow media degrades their quality. Notifications disrupt them.
People are angry because they consume angry content.
People are anxious because they consume worrying content.
People are shallow because they consume superfluous content.
This is life in the modern era—a degeneration of character procured by a deteriorating thought-life.
The most difficult and most important task of your life is to control what you think about.
There has never been a more difficult time in human history to maintain control over your attention. It’s why I don’t believe that phone addiction is merely distracting, but deforming.
Tech execs are the puppeteers.
Our devices are the strings.
We are the puppets.
Which is why our mental inputs matter. It matters what we consume (sources), how we consume it (mediums), and when we consume it (focus).
Poor Sources + Fundamentally Flawed Mediums + Stolen Focus = Cardboard Character.
Don’t let algorithms control your thoughts. Cut them and pursue quality.
Don’t let social media make you shallow. Discard it and pursue depth.
Don’t let notifications hijack your attention. Ban them and pursue presence.
It’s the most difficult and most important task of your life.
“You are what you contemplate.”
Change your inputs and your thoughts will change. Change your thoughts and you will change.
Perhaps a trip to Rome is due.
Five Soundbites:
Show me your thoughts today and I’ll show you your character tomorrow.
The most difficult and most important task of your life is to control what you think about.
Algorithms dictate your thoughts. Shallow media degrades their quality. Notifications disrupt their length.
Poor Sources + Fundamentally Flawed Mediums + Stolen Focus = Cardboard Character.
Change your inputs and your thoughts will change. Change your thoughts and you will change.
p.s. - I wrote this on a beach balcony overlooking the ocean. Not sure if it’s reflected in my writing, but it would be a nifty piece of supporting evidence if so.
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See you next week.
PW