Watch out. Once you start thinking, it changes your life.

I awoke with a start, thinking about the meditation for peace.

Then I started thinking about my day ahead. I do have an early appointment with a financial planner who I have known a long time now, who likes me and I like her. I have some money to invest, savings for which I have only recently taken responsibility.

Then the trains of thought collided from opposite directions on the same track.

The meditation was inspired by one person’s desire to honor another person’s birthday. As I understand it, that person lost his siblings and parents to the atomic bombs in Japan in WWII. He has devoted his adult life to the promotion of peace.

The funds that my retirement savngs are in--and that I would likely be placing my other savings--invest in many companies. I suspect some of the companies have involvement in the manufacture of atomic weapons.

I have never been able to see any ethical reason for the continued development of nuclear weapons by any person or country. Even Einstein, whose work so contibuted to their development, was at the end of his life deeply disturbed by the ends to which his beautiful work had contributed.

I might have unthinkingly glossed over this contradiction in my life-everybody invests, right?- if I hadn’t this week had to reschedule this appointment to this day. Now, will I invest my small savings toward machinery of war on the same day that I meditate for peace? On the same day I honor a person who suffered such fundamental loss?

What do I really believe? What is the meaning of my ethics? What else am I missing?

What kind of conversation am I going to have with my financial planner?