“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts” — Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius was a Roman emperor who embraced and practiced stoicism,

and I believe he still can teach us, old folks, something in regard to how to live this life.

Out of the ten quotes listed in the article, the last one above makes me stop and think,

and I must say I couldn't agree more.

What a great man he is!

What is the difference between "you are what you think" and "I think, therefore I am"?

"Thought" is the representation of our existence. It is ultimately a perception. 
How you feel and what you think are perception. It is the function of the brain.

"Thing itself" is true, but every one perceives it differently. Therefore there is 

no truth. What people think it is a truth, it is in fact an opinion. In other words 

it is merely a perception of "thing itself". However, general concencus always 

prevail and people believe in it. Science is a logical explanation of things and 

it does not tell you everything with your satisfaction. In my opinion, the better 

brain is a thoughtful brain. And if you have thoughtful brain, you are an  happy

individual. 

Thank you, Dr. Ohn, for your thoughtful comment.

In regard to the quality, the good and the bad of our thought,

I once in my youth, 1970's, wrote a small piece in our Sigetop

which had to do with the potential capabilities and possibilities of

our brain ranging from the extremely good to the extremely bad,

from being a Jesus to being a Hitler. and all that spectrum in between.

As a young man then I was terrified literally by the realization of

what my brain can do depending upon my making choices from moment to moment,

from day to day, from month to month, from year to year and for my life time.

I agree with Aurelius wholeheartedly in that how important it is for each human being

to do the quality control of his thoughts for all the reasons I don't have to list here.

Your posting brings me back to my pre-med days, which still shows my memory as vividly as yesterday.

Our venerable professor, 신사훈 선생님, said in the Latin Class,

“ Years ago, French Philosopher, Descartes said ‘Cogito ergo sum’, and many people admired him,

but he was WRONG, Period. Which is bigger? Denken or Sein. Denken is only a part of Sein.

Then one of our rascals, 추재옥, raised his voice and refuted the venerable Poressor Shin

by banging his desk, “Denken이 있기에 Sein이 있지 않습니까?”

At this very moment, the leader of our rascals, BB LEE shouted, “올쏘.” and clapped,

which was followed by room-filled laughing. At this uncontrollable atmosphere,

the professor’s effort to teach us was submerged by rains of clapping and laughing.

Professor Shin had to shake his head woefully and stopped his Theology teaching by saying,

“I cannot teach you. You, the worst rascals.” In his own words, “도저히 ‘유들’을 가르칠 수 없다.”

Annotation:

Cogito ergo sum’ means I think therefore I am.

Sein means exist or existence.

Denken means thought.

유들 means pleural form of you. Is this the right Hangul or English?

KwanHo brought all these slowly disappearing memories through our Premed School Days!!!

Yeh, it was the best two years of our lives we enjoyed enormously before we went to the hell/med school!

But, when I should look back now, I kind of feel embarrassed on my acting as a clown to tease so many 엄숙한professors to break their serious behaviors, many classmates remember.

Prof. 신사훈 was such easy victim that whenever I had a chance, I made fun of him to let the classmates enjoy and he soon became so afraid of me anticipating I would pull his leg again throughout the class hour and remain restless whenever I stand up raising the hand while the guy sitting next to me pretends to pull me down.

Supposedly I will have to be a good model(?) to the classmates as 반장 but I always wound up to lead/organize the tricks to making fun of the professors breaking the doldrums but believe me we had a good time, didn’t we, KwanHo?

Indeed, I still can’t help but laughing whenever I recall one incidence, we had with Prof. 신사훈. One day when he arrived at the class room a bit early, we locked the front door and watching how he would react. He knocked on the front door repeatedly! Someone peeped out through the small opening of the window, asking ‘뉘슈?’ sheepishly. Yeh, he got mad and shouting ‘문 열어, 유들 이러면 안되!’  I pretended to rush to open the door to welcome him and excused profusely as the 반장on our innocent ignorance to him in order to concentrate on the exam preparation so hard.

So, we proved that we exist because we exercised our brain to think happily! What a philosophy!

BB Lee