01
Feb
Thoughts about thinking
I space out whenever I have any spare time. My mind is a blank slate on my way to work on the bus, holding the same expression until I see my friends, or hit my bed.
Even till now I have no idea whether this is a normal phenomenon, or even whether other people have this problem. I did try to solve the problem one day, by grinning all the way to work. While there was a change in the reaction around me, I felt weird to encounter a sudden clearance around me. You probably would too, if a bizzarely curly-haired person with a blank expression suddenly decided to grin, and hold that silly face until he alighted from the bus.
That experiment aside, I plugged into my mobile phone for music to distract me whenever I commute. You see, I am used to having something to occupy my mind - having it clear like a suddenly unblocked nose makes me feel unnaturally.
You could argue that since I was aware that I was spacing out, that meant that I wasn’t really focused on nothing. I don’t know: maybe the problem is my pre-occupation with the prospect of having nothing to think about? That is quite related to my internal wrangle with whatever happens to thoughts once death occurs.
I couldn’t quite handle the thought that there would simply be emptiness where thoughts used to be, nothing where the five senses used to experience. That makes me not an atheist (obviously), since I believe in reincarnation. Being reborn again is less frightening, though it raises some heckles when you see that you have to go at it all over again (been there, done that: but not knowing it - again!)
It can be as mind-boggling as the crux of Life, the magnitude of dreading work multiplied a few hundred-folds, yet as simply managed as keeping your mind busy. When you are living your Life, and your thoughts do not idle, you tend to roll with the flow of time, rather than pondering over the Inevitable. Is this why retirees spoil their grandchildren rotten? To keep their mind off the passage of time where work used to dominate in their timespace?
on February 7th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
You sound a bit like my youngest brother. He spaces out all the time, and always has. He was the only 10-year-old I ever met who could easily spend two hours in the bath. When he finally got out you’d ask him,
“What were you DOING in there?” and he’d say, all puzzled,
“Washing.”
“But didn’t the water get cold?”
“Yeah, actually it did a bit,” he’d answer, and his face would light up as if you’d explained something profoundly important he’d been concerned about.
But sometimes when he was spacing out he also grinned, and I’ll never forget the day one of our neighours said to me,
“Oh, I saw your little brother the other day. Actually, I saw a grin coming down the road, and he was right behind it.”
It was SUCH a perfect description of my little brother and his big happy spaced-out grin.