Sticky mind

A sticky mind leads to misery.  That's what I understand from a little bit of my own experience and from what people like Osho and Alan Watts say.  First, let me tell you what I mean by the phrase "sticky mind".

Rani and Selva are friends.  He likes her very much, but he's never told this girl that he had feelings for her fearing that he might lose the friendship.  Now and then she says some good things about him and he believes that someday he will have her in his life.  So it goes on.  One fine day Rani tells Selva that she is getting married to someone else.

After about 2 weeks, heartbroken Selva is sitting at home listening to sad songs.  After a song his iPod Shuffle automatically plays a nice happy fast-beat song.  That song is one of his favourites and he keeps on listening to it unconsciously for about 2 minutes.  Suddenly he finds that he is listening to a happy song, and presses Next button until he finds another sad song sung by a heartbroken hero.

This is what I call as a sticky mind.  You know your mind is moving to other things than your sad or happy experience.  But you don't let it move on -- you force your mind to live a particular moment again and again.

Alan Watts says that by nature human mind is not sticky.  If only you let it wander wherever it wants to, it will just go around everywhere and your life won't be half as miserable as this.  (In the same way, a sticky mind relives happy moments too; but the enlightened people say that happiness and misery are one and the same, like two sides of a coin.  That's subject for another post later sometime, after I understand it enough.)