Modern psychology often treats attention as a limited resource, and Gandhi’s warning reads like an early statement of that principle. If attention repeatedly lands on threatening or demeaning cues, the mind can become primed for anxiety, rumination, or hostility—patterns closely linked to stress and lowered well-being. In cognitive terms, what we rehearse becomes easier to retrieve, which means “letting someone in” can gradually rewrite our default interpretations.
Consequently, the quote aligns with the idea that boundaries are not only interpersonal but cognitive. Protecting the mind includes choosing which thoughts to elaborate and which to label as noise—an internal filtering that preserves clarity without requiring the world to become perfectly kind. [...]
