The Thoughts We Think

It was Cicero who said: “To think is to live.” Many other eminent observers have suggested the prime importance of the thoughts a person thinks⎯for thoughts are the forerunners both of utterance and of action.

Sometimes we hear someone say, “If I had only thought, I would have done differently.” But for every deed we do, at some time or other, we must have set the pattern, we must have thought the thought before.

Sometimes people complain that they cannot control the thoughts they think. Perhaps they cannot altogether always; but if there could be no control of thought, there could be no control of action. There in nothing constructive done without its being preceded by plan and purpose. The blueprint precedes the building⎯if not on paper, at least a blueprint in a man’s mind. And before any unworthy or destructive act or utterance, comes first the thought⎯maybe not with complete awareness of its consequences, but sometime, somewhere, there must first have been the mental plan and pattern of mind and imagination. Sometime, somewhere, within the mind, the spirit, the intelligence, the knowing part of a person, there must first have been the mental pattern or impression.

But just because a person thinks something doesn’t mean that he is helpless before the thought; for if we were helpless to control our thoughts, we should also be helpless to control our actions⎯and we haven’t been left in such helplessness. We must move toward improvement and perfection, which would not be possible unless we could, increasingly, crowd out evil or unworthy intent by thinking clean, constructive thoughts.

There is still and always before us the ancient scriptural axiom: “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” And all of us have an obligation to determine what we will think about, what we will read, what we will study, what we will give our attention to. And on one of us would be justified in assuming that he is in no way responsible for the thoughts he thinks.

If we don’t want to build the building, there is no point in masking the blueprint. If we don’t want to invite the action, we’d better not think the thought.