Eileen Flanagan, in her book The Wisdom to Know the Difference, notes a current philosophical concept known as “the law of attraction”, the idea that your thoughts determine what you manifest in your life. I have come across this idea myself and have pretty much pooh-poohed it as warped new-age thinking. But Flanagan suggests that there may be truth here: “Although it is misleading to oversimplify this concept,” she writes, “it is certainly true that your expectations have a great influence on what you can and cannot accomplish.”
She goes on to explain: “The law of attraction works best when you are focused on what you can give, rather than on what you can get out of a situation. When you are listening to your inner wisdom and thinking of the greatest good, you are more likely to have the experience of ‘way opening’. Things fall into place more easily than when you are just focused on yourself. This may be because you are more in tune to ‘God’s loving design’, as Marcelle Martin put it. It may also be that you waste less energy anxiously worrying about the concerns of your own ego.”
This is a message for me today as one daughter moves back home between habitats, as our travelsnorth to another daughter’s resort picks up steam for the summer, as the garden needs planting, as the Boys & Girls Club gets closer to moving to its new home…and in the midst of it all, I wonder when I will have time to write. Flanagan’s words seem to point to something I should do or think…I just have to let its application sink in a while.
That’s it – this book is going on my to-read list!
And when you are done…lunch at Zoomski’s.