Watching Arising Thoughts

 One of the things I noticed this morning is how easy it is to let go of thoughts just as they arise in mind--and how hard it is, once the thought leads to another thought. It seems as though thoughts seem to take on a 'life and energy' of their own once a person allows them to follow their tendency. Interestingly, even the attempt to suppress thought requires just as great an energy: it's as though a ball has already started rolling down a mountain and it grows in speed and momentum, to the point where other thoughts stick to it and it becomes harder to stop.
 My guess is that when a person lets go of the thought (or chooses to do so) right as the thought is arising, one has no time to really make meaning out of it; at that point it is still a very young thought and doesn't really have the necessary build-up of time and habit to be powerful. But still another reason may have to do with a certain commitment one starts to have toward not just focusing on any thought that arises but choosing only those thoughts which might need attention.
  Of course another factor is that slowly one begins to realize where thoughts come from, so long as they are really in the present moment. Knowing this, the thoughts are no longer seen as having a self-existence. The thought is not 'this person' or 'that person' but rather just a manifestation of energy and impressions from the mind. It's truly hard to stay on this practice at first, but even after only a few hours of trying it, I realize that I am not that stressed, and the challenges I face don't seem as overwhelming as I had thought before, and there are hardly any stories or narratives left behind about 'why' a person behaves the way they do. In this way, my mind remains much less complicated.