#90 - Why the Heck Am I Thinking?
Really, why do any of us think as we do?
Hello, my friends,
Yes, it’s another late newsletter. What to do? Sometimes my brain cycles just get used up too quickly and I’m either too tired or dry to write a whole newsletter. I’ve told people over time that I can only watch a single show at once (like if I’m watching Star Trek: DS9, that’s the only series I watch) and I’ve been realizing that it’s also like that for other areas of my life. That’s probably why I juggle long-term interests on and off — because I can’t be going whole-hog (pardon the pun) on Judaism, stand-up comedy, BJJ (which requires physical and mental activity), calisthenics, running, writing a newsletter, work, family life, chores, etc. The latter three are immovable, but for the others, just having enough time to do them all is impossible, but I think mentally my brain tends to, pretty much subconsciously, nozzle off my interest in order to have enough cycles to keep going; I can only think deeply about so many subjects in week!
My vacillating interests/hobbies and my ambivalent feelings about not being able to settle down into only one or two was a topic I talked about towards the beginning of HMF (see #12 and #14), and then I kind-of trailed off on it (see what I did there?). Since then, readers have seen me learn how to read in Hebrew and then just kind-of stop, yearn to visit poetry open mics (I did memorize a few poems, but never made it out to perform them), spend a few months focused on running and then calisthenics, and probably several other topics that I can no longer remember. I can’t help it — I’m a promiscious thinker!
This sort of stream of consciousness, the present, reality…it keeps going! I often think of the some-Buddhisms idea of a self that is nothing. All of these worldly concepts swirl around me, but is there a me? Is there something in the middle? It’s hard to be sure. Part of me yearns to be one of those guys who is obsessed with trains (or something) because then I could predict who part of me would be in six months or a year or longer. As it is, I often feel like the same different person keeping up the illusion of sameness purely thanks to memory (my own and others’) and expectations.
It’s possible that I’m on this introspective jaunt because I’m listening to Carl Roger’s book, On Becoming a Person, which refers to the being a human and a self (and therapy) as a process (you can find some quotes from On Becoming a Person at the Storied Mind blog). These quotes (I don’t recall if they were all together in the chapter “This is Me”) speak strongly to what I’m talking about:
“Life, at its best, is a flowing, changing process in which nothing is fixed.”
“To experience this is both fascinating and a little frightening. I find I am at my best when I can let the flow of my experience carry me in a direction which appears to be forward, toward goals of which I am but dimly aware.
In thus floating with the complex stream of my experiencing, and in trying to understand its ever-changing complexity, it should be evident that there are no fixed points. When I am thus able to be in process, it is clear that there can be no closed system of beliefs, no unchanging set of principles which I hold. Life is guided by a changing understanding of and interpretation of my experience. It is always in process of becoming.”
For me, this is both real, bewildering, and frightening. The physical aspects of living are easy — you breath, eat, sleep, go on — but how does one continue to exist as a mind? Why is every thought? When you can’t fall back asleep at night: Thoughts. When you drive in silence: Thoughts. This never-ending chain of hardly controllable feedback! Controllable in spurts, because I can focus my thoughts. But that’s short-term, how about long-term?
I’ve also been by myself a lot for the past few days (and am going on an overnight solo camping trip starting tomorrow) so that has me thinking more than usual without distraction. Unlike many people, I haven’t spent much time noodling (spiraling?) about national politics. I’m more afraid of the lack of persistence in self-hood!
I miss having the psychic abilities of Professor X, not because I care about the contents of other people’s thoughts but because I’m curious about the patterns. How are we who we are? We’re so frustratingly early in the study of psychology! Today, I learned that the very first professor of psychology in the United States was James Cattell, appointed in 1889 at the University of Pennsylvania — a mere 135 years ago! How do I understand why my brain works as it does? I’d need several brains working simultaneously to compile the variables of emergent existence, figure out the mechanics of cognition, sort out how to measure it, and observe those measures for a long time. I may need more than a few brains for that lightest of tasks. No wonder we puny humans know hardly anything!
Anyway, I need to go feed myself, throw in another load of laundry, and clean Michael’s room. No wonder the learned men of the past were able to do so much, they had people doing all of this for them so they could retire to their study, read, and think. I merely careen through existence stopping briefly at chores, books, and other people. Who knows where I’ll be in five years? I’ve always had a very small interest in anarchism, maybe it’s the closest thing to a form of government my brain has!
Time Machine
Here’s what I wrote in HMF a year ago (in issue #37):
Logitechnophilia: Advertising my appreciation of Logitech products (un-sponsored).
A Graphic Mood: Short reviews of graphic novels I’d been reading.
Running Into Religion: Taking a job while listening to an interesting library program (converted to .mp3)
This idea of living life free from having to interrupt thinking and writing about thinking to eat, take care of others’ needs, to have the self-control to focus on one thing for a long period, I think the last time I had this luxury was for a couple of years as a teen, but then that’s only because I was the depressed teen that skipped school and did other stuff popular in the 70’s.
Your promiscuous thinking and multi-storied lifestyle has always been one of the things I've admired about you. Maybe because I experience a similar penchant and have you, my senior, to show me what a life following multiple prompts can look like.
That second quote from Rogers' book is a striking capture of this sentiment. In high school I described it as "the tumbling motion of life" and I feel like I'm still living that way. Whenever my tumble gets lodged someplace I fear I've lost some powerful momentum, so I have to give it a good kick and send it flying again. I wonder if there will come a time when I won't do this.
Sending love from Japan,
JOE