The Quality of the
Mind’s Eye
On seeing what is out of sight.
When I was in junior high, I remember clearly a question posed to a fellow student by my art teacher.
Before I get to the question itself, I will detail what I recall of the context. The fellow student did well in art but had trouble in academic studies, such as reading. I think the teacher and the student were discussing that problem of his. I was just listening in; eavesdropping is a terrible and wonderful habit of mine.
At one point the teacher, after prefacing by saying he read-this-somewhere, asks whether the kid thinks in pictures or in words.
The question itself captured my interest. It is like metacognition, thinking-about-your-thinking but deeper than that. Sticky, almost. A mess of thought that many people do not want to get involved with. The answer seems simple. People can give it in seconds.
But then they stop.
Like it was not that simple.
Well, the point of the question, or the usefulness of it was that people who think in pictures were better artistically but less language inclined, and vice-versa. I did not really care much about that: the whole sort of realm that this question inhabited intrigued me. The quasi-metacognition aspect.
When we think, how do we really think about something?
How do we see or think through the things in our mind?
So I transformed this question into something else, and now it is one of my common icebreakers. That question is simply:
Do you think in color, black-and-white, or abstract?
Far more prone to inspiring silence than other icebreakers, but in that silence is thought. Then after a few potentially awkward moments is the answer I had been seeking. I have had people say one. Then stop. Then say another. Some say a mix. Some stand by one’s answer. It is interesting. I am not quite sure what to infer from the responses; I do not judge by the answer. I judge more by how the path to which they arrived at the answer.
Whether they were at all confident? How unaware were they in their own thought? We are thinking all the time in one way or another. Our brains never truly turn off. Every second there are things spiraling through our brain, and yet, we do not really grasp what it is. It is like listening to music and not realizing or comprehending what language the singer is speaking. We think all the time, but we cannot quantify the very basis for our own thought.
People sometimes even say, ‘I don’t know,’ and laugh in defeat. I can accept that answer because we really don’t know that much about our brains, but I still think it is sad — pathetic. Thought and our identity are closely tied, surely we should seek to analyze what makes us us.
As for what I would answer, I must disclose that there two version of my question: the original and the revised, which is the one I shared in this post.
The original was just color versus black-and-white, and people only answered in those categories. This worked well and fine until I tried to answer it. I refused either category because my mind’s eye did not see in such objective traits. It saw things in an amorphous blob of qualities that I knew were there, but were not.
It was abstract. I knew something was red, but it was not red or black or white or anything. I saw the quality of red, the true identity of red to my internal perception floating in my mind. It was like the inner-truth of the color red.
With that epiphany, I added the ‘abstract’ answer to suit myself. Some people selected it. Maybe if I gave more varied responses people would choose that. Maybe people have no idea and are just choosing the best available in the choice-pool. Not the true answer that they do not even realize is true. Response bias at work.
But, anyway, my answer is abstract.
What is your answer?
Do not hesitate to think about it. It is fun to think about the confines of your own imagination.
Imagination. I daydream a lot. I plan out stories all in my mind. It is a very pleasurable activity. I spend a considerable amount of time just within my mind, seeing things that are not, but are in there, so I think about that too.
When you are imagining something, where is it? Is it small or large, when you ‘see’ something with your mental eye, how large is it, and how exactly are you feeling the sight?
Whenever I imagine a story up, with rich visual detail, I get hung up on that. I make things large, but they feel constrained to a tight space. I used to have a recurring dream — no, I wouldn’t call it a dream — it was a recurring vision. It was of my blanket stretching beyond the confines of my mind, growing into a size that was not possible. It felt like my mind was burning and tearing under the stress of being stretched. I hated thinking about it. Even now, writing about it, summoning up that mental thought gives me displeasure.
Normal thoughts are controlled; they fit into a simple space. To me, that space feels like it is behind my eyes, I am seeing it before my eyes. Hovering behind my actual vision. A thin line of space where dreams and images are projected. Sometimes it almost feels like my real vision and the mind’s eye can overlap. The two juxtaposed onto each other. I try sometimes to make that happen, but it fails terribly.
These two planes of perception are unmeetable, parallel lines running into infinity: like rails.
One for the mind and one for the body. Such a depressing thought, thinking about a self-evident truth. Never and forever are so final, so constricting.
But also safe. The lack of possibilities can be comforting to those seeking peace, no?
I don’t like that.
