There are words we’ve used all our adult lives, regularly, sometimes more than once a day, which have never been explained to us and we’ve never checked in the dictionary. Yet we use them confidently and unquestioningly
Today’s word is “thought”? So what is it?
A thing that occurs in our brain? True but childishly incomplete. Blood flows through our brain. Electric impulses pass by. Confirmation is received that what we’ve just experienced is a smell, an image, pain, etc. Thought helps make sense of a fact remembered.
Thought sounds as if might be static; in fact it can be a sequence. Rather marvellously, a thought may start out as a problem and end up as a solution. Even more marvellously, thought allows us to come to conclusions about ourselves that are unique, known nowhere else.
Thought helps us judge the outside world, saying what’s good and what’s bad. And we – using thought – may define how good is good and how bad is bad.
We may apply thought to simple visible things – a vacuum cleaner, an earring, a hamburger – or things that are theoretical and therefore invisible – politics, charity, forgetfulness. In some cases these latter abstractions may even take on unbidden shapes and colours; thus we have a green opinion about philately.
We may convert thought into other forms which others may examine. As with this post I’m writing.
And we may think about thought itself. See it as an asset even a friend. Except that thought isn’t always beneficial, it may develop strengths and uncontrollably impose itself on us, making us uncomfortable.
It could be that our thoughts are our greatest quality. Or our worst. It can help if we exercise our thoughts, making them fitter for the job.
Why not consider that final sentence? Thoughtfully.
When I was a kid I spent a lot of time laying around, thinking. As a working adult I spent most lunch hours walking around alone, thinking. Now, in retirement, I have so much time but I have little alone time where I think. I fear I spend too much time entertaining myself on my phone or computer and not enough time thinking. Yet, when I cook or clean or read, I really must focus on the things outside my mind. I agree with your last sentence.
ReplyDeleteColette: I meant it when I said it's unlikely that most of us have ever looked up "thought" or "thinking" in the dictionary. May "thought" be nothing more than flicking through a series of images without taking any of them by the hand and having an inaudible conversation? Preferably an argument. Does "thought" imply an attempt to arrive at some sort of conclusion?
DeleteMy problem is anger predominates when I clean or cook. Anger, almost by definition, is a futile exercise. There have been times when I've lain awake considering a DIY problem, trying this way and that. Almost always my preferred solution turns out to be duff because my mind was incapable of bringing together all the options.
I don't think you can think if you don't regard thinking as an enjoyable activity.
I always have too many thoughts on too many different issues. I play white noise or the classic station on the radio in order to concentrate on whatever I'm working on. Joyously it was the Brandenburg Concerto today---and I got oodles done, A six hour stint in the workshop flew by. As far as thoughts, sometimes its good to have mild distractions at my age.
ReplyDeleteWalt Whitman: To think of time—of all that retrospection! To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward! Have you guess'd you yourself would not continue?
Sandi: As you know I regard cleaning, cooking and gardening as intolerable burdens. Not work at all. For me work is writing, the final act of a sequence that starts with thinking. Thinking begets ideas, these need converting into events, descriptions, speech and much more, words are needed to give these matters reality, finally (and by far the most difficult) such words need animating to make them interesting. Not to quibble, these stages all consist of thinking just dressed up in fancier clothes.
ReplyDeleteI have done thinking/writing to the accompaniment of music but it has to be instrumental. Sung words catch me unawares and lead me to unprofitable destinations.
Is your last sentence Sandi or WW? The creative flow is a very fragile process, easily deflected. I have two novel starts (one over 50,000 words.) which have ground to a halt. Picking up the pieces can be painful, sometimes, it seems, impossible. But over-enthusiasm can also be a killer. Always be careful about passages you've longed to write. Usually they are the ones that require most re-writing.
Hemingway made a good suggestion: always break off for the day just before starting such "favoured" passages.
Misquoting another poet (Browning this time): always distrust "the first fine careless rapture". Chances are that that temptation - rendered into words - will turn out to be a cliché