My Dear Friend Is Near His New Beginning, Once Again.

Mindless Thinking - Edil Rentas Casiano

How often do you find yourself with your thoughts wandering, going in every direction, without you necessarily thinking about what you are thinking?  I must confess that this happens to me quite often, almost daily, and even multiple times a day. 

In a way, I think (here we go thinking again) that thinking is an operation, a function, that we do effortlessly and without necessarily knowing that we are thinking. Even when we say to someone, hey, you know what I was thinking?, or I was thinking this, you did the thinking, but you didn't not actually thought about the fact that you were actually thinking. In reality, you just thought or remember something, but you did not actually thought about it. It just happens naturally. It makes you wonder: if we can observe our own thoughts, who is the one doing the observing? It implies there are two different entities living inside our heads. There is the quiet 'generator' in the background that suddenly throws a random memory or an old song into our awareness, and then there is the conscious 'observer'—the 'me'—that sits back, listens, and reacts to it. If I am the audience, who is running the theater? 

I was thinking (not again), that thinking as a function is more often done as a way to find answers or solutions to problems, as a way to solve them. Thinking is done as a way to recall information, and also to remember the past. You can also think to remember people or places, and although we often say, let me think about it, or I have to think about that, this is said in a tongue in-cheek way, not exactly stating the fact that you will actually think about whatever it is you need to think about. 

Today for example, I was mowing the lawn while listening to music. I'm sure many of you know, that music can make you travel in time, to the past, or maybe the future. To me, music is the best way to travel in time, through your thoughts and memory. Memory makes you remember past times, places people, and even happy and unhappy moments we had in the past. But here is the real kicker about this mental time machine: does it actually tell the truth? When a song pulls us backward, we aren't watching a flawless video recording of the past. Our mind is a bit of an unreliable narrator. Every time we recall a memory, we change it just a little bit, coloring yesterday's events with whatever we are feeling today. We think we are looking at history, but we are actually looking at a painting that our mind keeps retouching. 

And yet, music keeps playing. Music makes you think even when you are not thinking about it. You just remember the past moments, brought to light by a song you heard at a given moment, in a given place, with a given person or persons. An sometime that thinking, those memories, can be painful. At which moment you tell yourself, that you want to forget that, that you don't want to think about that thing that brings pain back. It’s a strange, frustrating loop, isn't it? The moment you tell yourself, 'I want to forget that thing,' your mind has to actively focus on the very thing you want to erase. You have to remember what you want to forget just to try to forget it. It's like telling someone not to think of a white elephant the mind immediately conjures it up.

Of course, none of this could happen if it is not because of our mind.  It is a vast, untamed space that operates on its own whims, completely indifferent to the rigid structures of the modern world. Because our minds would rather drift through time than watch the seconds tick by, we have to invent tools to keep ourselves anchored. Most people don't think about their minds, their thinking, or their remembering something, to the point that they must use an external something, a calendar, a clock, a friend or family member, to help the not forget something. But at that very moment, they are actively thinking about remembering something. And that’s exactly the point I’m trying to make now. We live in a fascinating paradox. The things that truly matter to our souls—our deepest memories, the people we’ve loved, the places that shaped us—require absolutely no effort to remember; a single song while mowing the lawn can bring them rushing back in an instant. Yet, the mundane mechanics of modern life—the 2:00 PM appointment, the grocery list, the Tuesday deadline—require an entire army of calendars, alarms, and sticky notes just to stay afloat.

We pour so much energy into forcing our brains to conform to schedules and reminders, keeping track of a world measured in minutes. But perhaps we shouldn't be so hard on ourselves when our minds wander or when we forget a minor detail. Maybe "mindless thinking" isn't a flaw or a lapse in focus at all. It's just a gentle rebellion. It’s the mind's way of reminding us, especially now that we are retired, that it would much rather travel through time, chasing music and memories, than be bound by the ticking of a clock. After all, we have to practice and polish the skill of thinking in a timeless day, preparing ourselves for the one future moment that most of us do not like to think about... Crossing over.