A while back I was sitting in my trailer during one of those hot, humid, oppressive Nebraska summers. The Sun had shone steadily on my little tin box dwelling place, making it feel like an oven inside. I had a dinky little window AC unit crammed into one of my windows, and, try as it might, it was losing the battle.
I set up a box fan to help circulate what cool air was being produced by the AC unit. As I said, there just wasn’t enough cool air being produced by this little window unit to cool the entire trailer. I resolved to sit with my face as close to the fan as I could without damaging my rather large nose.
For the most part, I was pelted with the same hot, wet air comprising the rest of the atmosphere in my trailer. The only difference was that this air was moving quite a bit faster. This didn’t seem to make things worse, but it surely didn’t make things better. I continued to sit in front of this fan out of some twisted sense of hope that this hot, humid air blowing through a fan would bring me some relief.
After a short period of time I experienced something. Once in a while the fan would pick up a tiny pocket of cool air produced by the air conditioner which had not been assimilated by the predominant atmosphere in my trailer. This tiny pocket of cold air blew onto my face as a splinter of luscious coolness. I continued to sit in front of the fan in anticipation of these sporadic miniature Arctic blasts, hinting at what it would be like to be fully relieved of the miserable heat.
As the Sun started going down, the atmosphere cooled considerably, and the organism of my trailer wasn’t being bombarded directly by the Suns rays. Without so much input to fight against, my little air conditioner became more effective. My living space became more comfortable, to the extent that I could take my face away from the fan and enjoy the rest of my living space.
Our psyche is a lot like my old trailer. It will internalize the conditions of the atmosphere to which it is exposed. If the mind living inside the trailer wants to effect more desirable conditions it needs to act in such a way as to effect more desirable conditions. To make my trailer cooler I could have gone out and acquired more little window air conditioning units to install … I could have acquired more sources of positive input to hedge me against the prevailing negativity in which I was engulfed. I could have moved my trailer to a climate that is cooler and dryer all the time … I could have simply distanced myself from sources of negative input. I could have focused on ways the heat, and humidity had good intentions, and was actually benevolent … I could have come to realize that I do not have to accept negative input as entirely negative, learned to accept it in its true nature, and worked around it with positive intentions.
Or, we can just sit and wait for the Sun to go down, and let the atmosphere change for the better, which may, or may not happen.
Till next time remember, you’re great!