I remember hearing the title of this article on the radio when I was in high school. According to NPR, the title of this article was a marketing slogan promoted by the advertising agency Young & Rubicam to fund college scholarships for low-income black students. I haven’t heard it recently, so maybe it has fallen out of favor. In any case, it was an iconic slogan that stayed with pop culture for decades because we all kind of agree–a mind is a terrible thing to waste.
The Beauty And Power Of The Mind
The mind is a beautiful thing, and that is why it is a terrible thing to waste. The mind is what we think with and reason with. The mind controls our body, including our ability to speak, move, and exercise. The mind generates emotions and stores our most harrowing and beautiful memories.
The mind, more importantly, is what we love our family and friends with. If you are a believer, the mind is what you worship God with (Romans 7:25). The mind, it follows, is extraordinarily powerful and foundational to who we are.
Pardon the vulgarity, but there’s an expression in English, Don’t sh*t where you eat. The idea is that we should not make a mess in a place where we spend a lot of time, because we will have to deal with that mess on an ongoing basis.
Our toxic habits and behaviors, like addiction to porn/masturbation, are a perfect example of this expression. They are a kind of pollution that we sow in the same place where we spend every waking and sleeping moment.
Today, let’s not sh*t where we eat. Let’s keep our minds pure, as it relates to lust, greed, anger, envy and the like.
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