Bear with me a moment and stop thinking.
Okay, let’s be more specific. Decide that you won’t think any thoughts for the next minute. If that’s too big of a commitment, thirty seconds will do. No thoughts, just decide that you won’t think anything and then do it. Start your timer. I’ll do it with you.
Jeopardy music.
How’d that go? If you’re human (and I assume most of you are) the safe money says that a long time before the one minute mark a thought popped into your head. My thought was “chicken.” I think I’m going to roast a chicken this weekend and it just occurred to me to think about that fact. I had about five other thoughts, but I stopped counting because I was less than ten seconds into the experiment and I figured it was pointless.
So, this isn’t big news to you probably. It’s sort of impossible not to think. Thinking is what brains do, like lungs enjoy breathing, your kidneys enjoy getting your blood squeaky clean, and your spleen enjoy whatever it does… spleening?
The real question, though, is who thought that thought? Those were words that popped into my head. I imagine some popped into yours. But we decided not to think any thoughts, right? (If you didn’t, you cheated. Go back and try again. Or just take our word for it.) You decided not to think for one measly minute, then someone piped up and said something in your mind. In my case, “chicken.”
Who was that?
The easy answer is that it was you. But did you decide, ten seconds into our experiment, to give up for no reason? You might’ve, but I suspect you didn’t. So if you decided not to think any thoughts, and then a thought decided to pop up and show itself anyway, who made that decision? Apparently not you.
This happens to us every second of every day, but we mostly don’t think about it because it’s what we like to call “normal,” which is another way of saying something super strange that happens all the time and we’re used to it.
Here’s another question: If you decided not to think for a minute and someone else decided to grab the steering wheel and think anyway, what else is that someone doing that you’re not aware of? Nursing unfocused anxiety? Bearing grudges against people you know not why? Eating cookies when you’re not hungry? (That’s me.)
I have no answers to these questions, but they’re worth thinking about because you and I and everyone we know spends every moment of our lives inside these thoughts we’re carrying around — and we’re not in control of them at all.
One more question for the road. You decided not to think any thoughts and a thought appeared anyway. Who was it who noticed the thought? It was you, wasn’t it?
Or was it?