I need to remember how to think

I am about to go on a five-month journey that has one objective — to get my mind to think again. I’ve prepared a loose itinerary whereby I’ll visit most continents and speak to thousands of people in order to try and achieve this goal.

The decision to take a trip, as opposed to staying put, is practical, not romantic — there will be a lot of experimentation involved, which I’d feel more comfortable doing outside of my immediate social environment, for now.

There’s nothing more to it. I already lead a great life, surrounded by people I love, doing work that I enjoy, in one of the nicest countries in the world. I feel fulfilled. I look forward to returning to all that in a few months, once the exercise is over. So this won’t be one of those epiphany-seeking, get-away-from-it-all trips, where you find yourself and discover the simple beauty of the world and the kindness of fellow man — I’ve had such journeys before, and they have had their positive effect.

No, this is more mundane, like taking your car to be serviced or skis to be sharpened. My thinking has gone rusty over the years of comfortable, routine living. I’m referring here specifically to “free time” thinking. Let’s say that I spend 75% of my time sleeping or being focused on something — work, other people, conversations, reading, writing, learning, problem-solving, doing sports… — the other 25% is free thinking, which I do when I walk around, drive, do my shopping, or sit in uneventful work meetings — anything that doesn’t require natural focus. My thoughts at such times quickly become haphazard — they jump from one idea to another, without much sense or consequence. They resemble each other day in and day out. This unconnected, nonsense-infused thinking has become a habit, and my mind an idling car engine — running, but not going anywhere.

Conversely, my thoughts find it very easy to focus themselves involuntarily, through daydreaming. I imagine impractical situations, both pleasant and not, in great detail, and invest myself into them emotionally. This sequence rarely leads to meaningful action; it actually just saps my energy, motivation and will. People say that visualizing your dreams helps you achieve them; for me, the pleasure I receive from the process actually hinders action and serves as a substitute for the actual achievement.

I could give you examples here, but that would require too much concentration, and I am too lazy.

Before you say that all this happens to everyone and isn’t a big deal, consider this: the price I pay for a mind used to idling and involuntary focus is that I can’t focus it at will. My learning isn’t efficient. When reading, I often retain very little. When analyzing difficult concepts, I get lazy or distracted and stop just short of truly understanding them. I can only assume that all this has gives rise to a multitude of false convictions and incoherent semi-facts floating around my head.

I say the idea is to “remember how to think” as opposed to “learn” since I do believe that I used to know how to do it. I grew up in a war-torn country, close to the real world, and versed in practical thinking of the street smart kind. I ended up with a good life somewhere better, so there must have been a few good decisions along the way. But at some point I lost the thread. Now I am ignorant about almost any generally important topic in today’s world.

Global warming, nutrition, refugees and terrorism, natural resources, international affairs, economics, politics — name any of those subjects and you’ll find me barely able to skim the surface of understanding, able to answer one or two successive “why” questions at best. Worse, I am not even able to judge whether those topics are of any relevance at all (and if not, which ones are); for all I know, they could be impositions of wicked or just lazy minds onto more lazy minds, as the real topics of today lie elsewhere. This, too, is someone else’s thought, and I don’t really have an opinion about it.

My thinking is trite, hermetic, needlessly self-focused, repetitive, unimaginative and inefficient. This is why the bulk of my ignorance is probably packed away into a blind spot of which I’m not even aware. I need external stimuli to shed light onto it. So the idea is to confront myself with the world’s realities and get my mind to tackle them, hoping that over time its fire will start burning on its own again. That’s the best plan I could come up with.

I repeat — the goal here is very specific. Only my reason is broken, thankfully. My intuition, empathy and other irrational mechanisms work just fine. That is why I am happy. If I’m choosing between happy and mentally sharp I’ll choose happy any day; still, walking through life intellectually blind is not much fun. So I will tear my thinking apparatus down to its foundations and rebuild it again over the course of a few months, like you would a badly plaque-affected tooth, for reasons of basic hygiene.

I will treat the experience as an experiment, and document everything carefully. It will be fun. More to come.