On Thinking

I do an awful lot of thinking. ... No, let me rephrase that: my mind is always racing full-speed, like a car engine in neutral with the gas pedal pushed to the floor. Or, to put it another way, what I do is as directly related to thinking as a table full of baking ingredients is to a pie. Two sentences into this blog and already I'm galloping wildly off in all directions. Actually grabbing any single thought and holding onto it long enough to do anything of value with it is nearly impossible for me. It's like trying to hold on to a greased pig. (As the use of three totally unrelated analogies/similies in the space of one short paragraph amply verifies. Typical.)

This blog was begun with the idea that it would deal with the various aspects of thinking. I was going to delve into the subject at some depth...or what passes for depth with me. Here is how it originally began:

"We think from the day we are born. Even before there is what might be considered rational thought, babies begin thinking and learning how to use their bodies, familiarizing themselves first with the fascination of fingers and toes and the sound and faces of their parents, and exploring the senses--taste being the first. Then rationality and logical thought slowly enter the equation, and from that point mind and body begin a long (with luck) parallel journey."

And at that point, I found myself veering off course with the following:

"The mind is the driver, the body the car." And we're off on another analogy. "But eventually the there comes the point where the body reaches the peak of its abilities and, like a car, begins a slow but inevitable decline. It's not pleasant, being out there on the freeway of life" (and one metaphor) "and despite all the thinking in the world the body/car finds itself being increasingly overtaken and passed by sleek, newer models with shinier paint and more highly polished chrome, being forced into the slow lane when the driver/mind wants to stay in the fast lane."

I have no doubt that I will be hearing from someone on the proper definitions of and uses of metaphors and similies and analogies ("Oh My!"). How and why I go wandering off into analogies involving cars and drivers, I have no idea, other than that digressions are obviously one sign of an overactive mind.

So I tried to pull myself back to the theme on which I'd started: "On Thinking".

"I've always wondered why, since thinking is one of the greatest of all the unique gifts bestowed upon Mankind, so many people don't seem to bother with using it, and are content to let other people do their thinking for them."

Well, I only got one sentence there before another digression/analogy barged in, presenting me with the mental image of a nest of baby birds, mouths agape, waiting for their parents to regurgitate nourishment. Too many people never get beyond the baby-bird stage. They willingly swallow anything they're fed/accept anything they're told. Pat Robertson says the Haiti earthquake was God's retribution for the Haitian people's having made a pact with the devil a couple hundred years ago? Really? Gee, that sounds terrible. But I'm not going to spend any time thinking about it for myself, or wondering why God waited a couple hundred years before expressing His displeasure (hey, He's pretty busy). If Pat says it, that's proof enough for me. I'll just go along with whatever Pat...or you...or anybody says.

Then a very brief return to the main track for:

"I can't help but wonder how much of the anger and hostility sweeping the nation today is based on thought and how much on sheer, unreasoning emotion engendered by total lack of thinking."

And at that point I realized that at the rate I was going, this particular blog was going to be only a few pages shorter than The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and decided to call it a day. Maybe I'll try to talk about thinking again sometime. But, you know, it's kind of like....

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