When we’re expecting a child or a guest, it’s good to feel like a port. We’re ready to receive. We’re calm and serene. We’re quiet and still. Twenty-nine years ago my son was born, and his birthday reminds me of how great it feels to be a dock, a port in a storm, a landing place. I’ve tried always to be that for my children, rather than thinking I ought to be on the boat with them. In the same way, our thoughts are like our children or a guest. We need to let them be themselves. We need to let our thoughts have their own existence. If they dock with us because we’re tussling with a knotty problem that we need to think through, that’s fine. But then we must let our thoughts go. Just as boats are not made for being docked forever—their purpose is to move and travel–so thoughts can’t stay in one place for too long. The essential nature of a thought is movement. Don’t try to make it stay. Instead, imagine a thought that’s worrying you or troubling you as though it were a guest. There’s nothing you really have to do except say hello, have an interchange, then send it on its way. Let it have a life of its own and don’t attach to it. It doesn’t belong to you, even though it may be part of you. Give it more freedom and flexibility. See where it goes. See where it lands next.
