Life on Purpose

One of the big issues in quitting smoking is temptation resulting from thoughts of cigarettes. The more that would-be quitters think about notthinking about them, the more they do. In psychology, this is called the “white bear” effect, from a phrase in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Winter Notes on Summer Impressions:“Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute.”4

We’re pretty lucky ants.

We started talking about his interesting occupation, and I brought up the subject of Julia’s “miraculous” recovery from a series of six heart attacks and lack of brain response. He looked into the distance and responded, “I saw a very similar case last year. An older man in our ICU had a sudden heart attack, and we couldn’t revive him. After essentially calling it quits, he popped up and started talking to us. It really freaked us all out! Then he died a few hours later.” He mused, “I think the body may have the ability to reboot itself in the way a seemingly dead computer can reboot. I can’t understand how, but I’ve seen it.”

The Hindu philosophy presupposes the reincarnation of the soul. A few years ago I spoke with a Vedanta Hindu guru in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains and asked him how the concept of reincarnation affects Hindu culture. He laughed and said, “Well, look at India. We never get anything done!” When I pressed him for clarification, he answered, “If you know you’re going to come back after you die, you don’t feel like you need to finish things in this life.”