Can You?
Can you sit perfectly still, every muscle at rest, and let your mind go quiet and pleasant? Had it ever occurred to you that this was even an option? Try something else: can you drive without reaching for your phone, without texting, without poking at the dashboard screen, without the radio or a playlist running in the background? For a lot of us the mind insists on a conversation. If nobody else is around, it strikes one up with itself.
I'm asking whether you can stay in the moment and attend only to what driving safely requires. Whether you can sit through a church service or a lecture without fidgeting, without your thoughts drifting somewhere else. Stillness. Silence. No demand that anything keep you amused.
None of this was deliberate on my part. I didn't set out to arrive here, and at first I didn't even register that anything had changed. Now I notice. Looking back, I'm fairly sure it grew out of the meditation I've been doing. Peace of mind might be the right name for it, I'm not certain. What I can say is that I'm able to simply be. The mental clutter doesn't show up anymore. If a thought isn't needed, I let it go unthought.
My attention has turned choosy. These quiet stretches have become room for things I usually never get around to, the odd chores and ideas that slip my memory when I'm occupied. I let images come to me the way they want to come, by intuition, instead of forcing whatever I assume I'm supposed to picture. The mind works like a blank screen, and I rest it on nothing rather than on the gloomy or sour thoughts that used to fill it.
Part of that is refusing to size people up or pass verdicts on things as they cross my view. It even means finding something kind to think about where envy might have crept in before. So yes, you can shift your own mind, one thought after another. You can skip the thoughts that block an attitude adjustment and keep a better road ahead out of reach.