The Death of Thought

One of the things I like about writing is that it forces me to think. I sit here, quietly, and think about what I want to say next. A novel idea, I know. But actually, in this day and age, it is quite novel.

How much time in a given day do you spend not doing anything but thinking? If you’re anything like me, it’s basically none. Instead, any break I get in between what task I’m doing, I’m on Twitter, or Instagram, or Messenger, or checking email, etc. Any respite in a day can now be plugged by any number of things since we’re always connected to the internet.

And so it goes.

Basically, the only time I have to think is when I’m in the shower. And that’s only if I’m not catching up on a podcast. I’m the type of person who feels like days are far too short, so the more tasks I can stack on top of each other, the better. Monday is usually an exception because the shows I listen to aren’t posted for the day yet.

And so, I think.

Today, my topic of thought was extremely meta: how much I used to think. When I was a kid, more than a few people thought there was something wrong with me because I was so quiet. Really, I was just sitting there observing, and thinking. I was in my own head, but I enjoyed it. Certainly more than the vast majority of social interactions.

To an extent, I’m still this way. But, again, now I have the entire internet to distract me at any given moment. And I always succumb. Thought is the victim.

I spend so much of my day having information pushed at me, yet I spend almost no time to actually process it. Doing so would require a pause in the flow of information. And I’m afraid of what I might miss.

So, again, I go back to the process of writing. I believe one big reason I enjoy it so much is that it’s a forcing function to get me to think. I enjoy sitting here, coming up with thoughts seemingly out of thin air, and jotting them down. It’s the process of creation.

Reading gives me similar joy because I’m the type of person whose mind wanders in a million different directions when I’m reading. On one hand, that makes me an impossibly slow reader. On the other, some of my best thinking happens during this time.

But isn’t scanning Twitter, email, etc, just a form of reading and/or writing? I suppose. But it’s too fragmented. You’re on to the next thing before you have a chance to truly form a thought on the last one. Nothing sticks. Snapchat managed to productize the reality of the ephemerality of all these services, but they all basically work this way. Google is now our memory instead of having to rely on our actual memory.

Anyway, just a few thoughts I had during my brief moment of thinking today. Back to Twitter.