Life is all about time and attention. Whatever we spend time on and give attention to becomes our life. For a mountaineer, life is all about mountains. For a scientist, life is all about science. For a singer, life is all about singing. The more we indulge a thought, the more likely we are to be convinced of it. If we develop hatred or jealousy toward a person and spend more and more time on that thought, we become more convinced we are right. If we develop an ambition to attack a target, and spend more and more time on that thought, our desire to get that target will increase with every passing day. If we fear something, the more we think about it, the more it will grow.

The question is: how do we decide what thought we want to spend time on? If we feel jealous, those thoughts naturally come to mind. The moment we see that person or join a discussion about them, those old thoughts capture our attention, and we can’t get past them. The same is true of fears and ambitions. Whenever we encounter the person we envy, see the target we crave, or face something we fear, two possibilities arise. First, as soon as we feel hatred, jealousy, craving, or fear, we entertain it and think more and more about it, as if adding fuel to the fire. When jealousy arises, we think of all the past events that hurt us. When craving enters the mind, we think of all the people who have achieved that goal and feel tempted to reach it quickly. When fear comes, we imagine all the things that may go wrong and become certain it will happen to us. Second, we can stay aware and distinguish mental stories from reality.

The capacity to discriminate mental stories from reality can’t come from thin air. When an apple fell from a tree, Newton could observe it and deduce the law of gravity because he had worked on it for years, and his mind was prepared to see reality. Many people who saw that apple fall before and after Newton could not do so because they never prepared themselves to understand. When they had time, they were busy having fun or busy reaching their goals and targets. That’s why, when the apple fell from the tree, they couldn’t see what Newton saw.

Whether we have the discrimination to distinguish reality from mental stories depends on how we live each day. If we spend our entire life running after targets, taking pleasure in shallow things, having fun partying, just gathering the resources to have more pleasure and ensuring the same for our kids, having shallow discussions with people around us, never challenging our capacity, how are we going to develop that discrimination? Sliding down a slope is always easier than riding a peak. The mind habitually indulges us in those activities that give us pleasure. We tell our kids to have discipline, leave instinctive pleasure behind, and focus on their studies so they can get into a good university, but we do the opposite with ourselves. We reject the most profound discussions, tagging them as boring. If we don’t build muscle daily, we won’t magically develop strength when we have to fight a crucial fight. That’s why instances of mental stress and depression are on the rise because we have not enabled the children to develop discrimination in life. We haven’t helped them understand life’s larger framework. Many families lack an enabling ecosystem that helps children contemplate life’s framework, so when a crisis hits, they feel simply lost.

There is no magic pill to build muscle. Anyone who wants to will have to go to the gym or exercise. There is no magic pill to have good immunity. One has to adopt a healthy lifestyle and work on diet and mental health. There is no magic pill to gain knowledge. One must read, observe, and analyse. There is no magic pill for wisdom in life. One must stay constantly aware and distinguish between reality and mental stories. One must ask oneself the relevant questions, put oneself in the witness box, and examine threadbare. Examine reactions to different situations and see where they come from. From a mental story or reality? Whether the mental story holds up in the present context. For a mind that is desperate to get that quick dose of dopamine or testosterone, it may look very tiresome, but there is no way out. That’s what we tell our children: that there is no alternative to hard work. This work is actually not so hard. It’s just that our old habit patterns, developed from living mindlessly, make mindfulness so difficult.