Shenpa

you cannot change the other person. you can take care of yourself.
possibly the most valuable two sentences I've read in college.

I watched my thoughts go by for six hours on the airplane today. our minds can change so quickly, our thoughts come and go so instantaneously. How do we subconsciously chose which ones to hang on to? We have some sort of tendency to hook onto the ones that feel good. To attach ourselves to the thoughts that feel nice as they go by, even if they are toxic. Even if they cause suffering.

If you were to look up the word Shenpa in a Tibetan dictionary it would say: attachment. But that definition does little to express the magnitude of the word and the effect it has on us.
Read up on Pema Chodron if you're interested.
I like to think of my own shenpa hooks as really long creepy looking fingernails - that reach out and cling to thoughts or experiences I don't want to let go of, or watch pass.
With an open mind and an open heart we can retract our shenpa hooks and be awake and present. Be compassionate to others, and take care of ourselves. Retracting those hooks? Easier said than done. Of course.

As I watched my thoughts go across my mind on that airplane, and hook onto so many of them that caused me pain, I thought about that pain, and what would make it go away.
It was that realization; that thing I read last week; that thing I wrote down and pasted on my bathroom mirror because something in me knew. You cannot change the other person. So t.r.u.e. These thoughts, what were they doing? Nothing! Nothing but causing me suffering. Hooking onto them, thinking about them, wallowing in them, being upset about them, it did not change the situation in the least. So what could be done? Unhook and take care of m.y.s.e.l.f.