# Chapter 120

“I was sovereign over only one thing, and that was my thoughts.” Wheeler

The 25 plus years I have spend overseas has taught me many things, but the first and foremost of them all is that I can’t be American outside of America if I want to live in peace and get along. And the most insidious thing about being an American is that you think you have rights. That can be a deadly understanding on my side of the world. Whoever has the gun, has the rights where I live.

American “rights” mean nothing outside of the borders of the USA and I am not sure they mean what they did in the past, even there. We think we have the right to choose our own destinies, our vocations, our own political leanings, our place where we want to live and the person we are going to marry . . . and to think what we want to think.

After visiting 50 plus countries and living abroad for a quarter century, I have seen all of these “right” stripped away except one. The one we tend to use the least. Our minds. Thinking is difficult work and in very short supply.

But is likely the only thing you truly have control over, and you need to leverage it more than all others. It is critical for your well being that you have thought well and that they are orderly thoughts. It is the gateway to understanding the meta-events happening around you and in the world. In a completely different usage of the word “think” there is this take: “It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.” —Dale Carnegie

Think.

Be King over your thoughts.