"I say, How do you do it?" asked John, rubbing his knee. He was quite a practical boy.

"You just think lovely, wonderful thoughts," Peter explained, "and they lift you up in the air."

-Peter Pan by James Matthew Barrie

Just think lovely thoughts, huh?

When you’re buried beneath a mountain of worry, when you’re suffocated by anxiety, drowning in guilt, paralyzed by fear, crippled by despair, shackled by self-loathing, enslaved to lust, or blinded by pride...

Just think lovely, wonderful thoughts?

This week I tracked down a copy of Peter Pan and re-read it, delighted at the cocktail of magic and truth. When I found the quote above, the moment Peter teaches the children to fly, I realized I’d forgotten that the thoughts weren’t enough, that none of the children had managed to fly on their own. Barrie writes, “Of course Peter had been trifling with them, for no one can fly unless the fairy dust has been blown on him. ”

This book you’re holding is more than words on a page. It’s access to the fairy dust you desperately need. It’s magical assistance for the enabling of flight. It’s the help you’ve been needing to think those elusive good thoughts.

Thinking good isn’t a child’s dream, something for the naive to chase, a bedtime story to calm you down. Thinking good is real, entirely possible, and when you do it it feels an awful lot like flying.

Don’t you want to be lifted? To fly?

To be free of the bad thoughts, like rocks in your pockets, tethering you to the ground?

To be full like a balloon of lighter-than-air thoughts, thoughts with feathers, thoughts excellent and pure, thoughts like a mother’s whisper on your way out the door?

Do you ever wonder what it must feel like? To fly?

To have so many lovely, wonderful thoughts?
The joy of it. The magic. The other-ness. The ability to see so much so clearly. The peace of it--sounds muffled by so much space. The freedom.

I bet when you’re flying you feel brave and alive. I bet you feel like Peter Pan, above it all, like your life hums with adventure, like you’ll live forever...

That’s how it feels to THINK GOOD.