I think not to think.
This is not the paradox it seems.
Our brains are trash trucks, masticating our voluminous detritus – mattresses, strollers, computers, plastics, books – as readily as shelled peanuts, grunting contentedly as the bolus descends its iron pharynx. I don’t mind getting stuck behind city refuse removers on narrow city streets. So much history and industry, so many memories, vanishing in a gulp, with emotionless indifference.
So will our brains devour whatever’s heaved into them by the burly biceps of experience with barely a burp – till the prying silence of the wee hour murmurs, “What do you think? What do you really think?”
Then comes the indigestion of inconsiderate consumption. Spend your days fretting about stuff, status, stocks, sickness, politics, death and such will be the contents of your night’s cud. Feed your mind sweet morsels and reduce the chance of night-sweats. While not in charge of our dream factory, we can regulate its input.
Aphorisms are my preferred ingredient. Bedside I keep a stash beside the antacids. An aphorism abducts one’s intelligence from the infuriating developments of day. An aphorism forces you to think: agree or disagree – where do you stand vis-à-vis? No aphorism simply soothes: it draws a line and demands you choose sides. One has no choice but to think. Thinking abstractly spares us the tsuris of thinking actually. My night-mind frolics with notions – and, in my case, ways to phrase my perceptions. I wake grinning at my concoctions and not groaning at my frustrations.
Case in point. Jane and I had been having a shitty week. I apologize for the adjective but no other suffices. I won’t trouble you with particulars, but nothing seemed to be going right. Yes, thankfully, none of our complaints were fatal – yet – but just wait! It was that sort of week.
Not wanting to go to sleep grumping, I opened my current compendium of pithy perceptions and sampled:
The ingratitude of the world can never deprive us of the conscious happiness of having acted with humanity ourselves.
Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but gangs of criminals on a large scale?
Injustice is relatively easy to bear, what stings is justice.
We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable.
Inspiration cannot be willed, although it can be wooed.
Every institution goes through three stages – utility, privilege, and abuse.
An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
Beating up on “intellectuals” is the last refuge of demagogues.
I’ve omitted the originators of these observations to avoid distraction. (They are, in order, Oliver Goldsmith, Saint Augustine, Mencken, Updike, a guy called Storr, Chateaubriand, Emerson, Dr. Johnson, and Anthony Lewis.) My point is their effect. Plop any into your consciousness, like Alka Selzer, and watch it fizz. Feel better already?
Some people deploy puzzles for this purpose – abducting their attention from the murky mundane into happy hypotheticals, crosswording or Wordle-ing their way to equanimity. I shy from pointless pondering. My cocky consciousness prefers being busy saving the world. Discovery is my opiate – to each their own.
Thinking of this sort lifts the brain from grungy particulars to ingratiating patterns. Our suffering, it turns out, is typical, nothing special. Others have wrestled worse. Our predicament is instructive, however grim. We can smile at ourselves.
These are hard times if you’re paying attention. Unprecedented majorities profess dissatisfaction with their lot. Thinking not to think may not sweeten your temper but it’s worth a try.