Everyday Canvas

Thinking on Thinking

Prompt: What do you think about thinking itself, in general? Do humans think all the time?

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In my experience, thoughts come to me during the course of the day. I don’t think, I think knowingly. Well, it figures, doesn’t it! I only think on purpose when I am writing. At least, that is something.

Yet, I see I just mixed up the process of thinking with its subject matter in the paragraph above, as there is a difference between the thinking process and the subject matter of thought. Usually, our emotions react more strongly to the topics inside our minds than what’s going on around us at the moment. When we think something upsets us, we react to the thought of it rather than the actual upsetting incident.

Fixated, we only think we are thinking when we focus on things bigger than us. The rest of what we think is a reaction to the world around us.

While I was in school, I did consciously think because my group of friends were always among the “thinking kind.” In high school, our subjects were of the more ethereal, spiritual stuff. Are we being told wrongly of the truth about the existence of God? Who made the universe? Is the Big Bang just a fizzle? What is right and wrong? Why do we believe in certain ways? Etc. A reason for this type of chewing the fat must lie in the fact that ours was an all-girls school. I am sure if boys were there, our thoughts would steer toward their way.

During higher education, our thinking and discussions and the subject matter shifted to more social and political avenues. Later on in real life, we became entangled in our daily lives, and even the old friends, when I met them on occasion, picked subjects along the lines of child raising, grandkids, wrinkles, recipes, the ins and outs of housekeeping, other life experiences, and when the election time struck, politics.

Probably that is why during the course of my day now, my mind can only stomach the mundane. Still, thinking must be a consistent thing, whatever it is we think. Accordingly, we must be thinking almost all the time whether we realize it or not. Whether we focus on everyday events or what is sensory, we judge, predict, and interpret through our thoughts.

I am positive that, besides promoting a decision or resolution, thinking has other virtues, such as distracting us with fantasies and letting us float over the tough life events. On sleepless nights, when worries seem to attack us, we are reacting to our thoughts and not the actuality of whatever it is that has happened or can happen. These reactions I do not consider to be thoughts but rather emotions, acting as the friendly and sometimes unfriendly alibis of thoughts.

In some instances, we might overthink (worry is the better chosen word here); or else, we avoid thought on certain matters, which is a worse habit because we drain power from ourselves when we choose being thoughtless and not knowing. Thoughts are important as they affect our health, and mental practice can change how our brains and relatedly our bodies operate. It is a scientific fact that identical twins, sometimes, develop different immune systems; possibly, their thinking makes it so.

Whatever it is we think, we must be addicted to thinking in some way, or else, why would anyone resist the practices of meditation? Yet, most do who take up meditation, at least at first, because it feels next to impossible to quiet a mind that is addicted to thinking and make it willfully blind.

The thing is, most of our thoughts just happen, without accomplishing anything immediately. Their accumulated long-term effects may probably be more intense, but I don’t know of any study on this; neither have I paid any attention to my own way of thinking on this accumulation factor.

Yet, thinking is an essential process, and possibly, we can guide ourselves in this area. Wisdom can be asking ourselves these questions: What could I think, should think, that I don’t think? Just what is it that I am missing here? This way, our thinking will not have a blind spot, and we’ll feel safe because we know, on any important subject, we have thought everything in every way possible.