Zen and the art of sleeping
My mind never stops. However mundane the thought, it cannot be stopped: only momentarily distracted with another equally mundane thought or an act of biology, such as having to pee. That, or having a migraine or other biological function seems to override the brain, occupying every nanosecond of available thinking time - if there is actually such a thing.
I'm always in awe of the people who say they can meditate and blank their minds of everything. "Oh, you really should try it. It's absolutely amazing." Personally, I think this is impossible. "It just clears my thoughts and helps me focus." So you focus on your spleen, or on your breathing or think about your gallbladder. Whatever, it's still thinking. How is that different from wondering how ducks flying in formation decide who gets to go next? Once you get down to it, it's all semantics, really.
Lately my mind has been deriving sick pleasure in not letting me sleep. It just keeps going, and going and going and seems intent on bringing up random issues that should have been settled a long time ago. For example, during a recent night of sleeplessness, a few neurons got together to torment me on whether I had filled in my social security number on a government tax form some months ago. Not productive, being that there is not a damn thing I can do about it, especially not at 3:24 am.
When not preoccupied with burocratic minutia, some of my brain cells write stories, complete long elaborate short stories with a beginning, middle and end, of which I can only remember the first paragraph the next morning.
Ellen DeGeneres spoke of this topic in her standup routine some years ago, about mthe tricks your mind plays on you when you are trying to go to sleep, and the useless things it busies itself to prevent you from doing so. "Blue. I like the color blue. I should really look into that new laundry detergent." Random and more or less useless but they can't be stopped. Kinda like watching a marathon of some dumb TV show. You know it's dumb and wrong, but you can't help yourself.
I suppose it could be worse. I don't lay awake at night wondering what planet Tom Cruise is really from, or what shoes I will wear tomorrow (in all likelihood, it will be my new pink fuzzy slippers). I did however, for a brief moment, ponder whether "truthiness" was already a word, or if Colbert did in fact pull it out of his ass.
I'm always in awe of the people who say they can meditate and blank their minds of everything. "Oh, you really should try it. It's absolutely amazing." Personally, I think this is impossible. "It just clears my thoughts and helps me focus." So you focus on your spleen, or on your breathing or think about your gallbladder. Whatever, it's still thinking. How is that different from wondering how ducks flying in formation decide who gets to go next? Once you get down to it, it's all semantics, really.
Lately my mind has been deriving sick pleasure in not letting me sleep. It just keeps going, and going and going and seems intent on bringing up random issues that should have been settled a long time ago. For example, during a recent night of sleeplessness, a few neurons got together to torment me on whether I had filled in my social security number on a government tax form some months ago. Not productive, being that there is not a damn thing I can do about it, especially not at 3:24 am.
When not preoccupied with burocratic minutia, some of my brain cells write stories, complete long elaborate short stories with a beginning, middle and end, of which I can only remember the first paragraph the next morning.
Ellen DeGeneres spoke of this topic in her standup routine some years ago, about mthe tricks your mind plays on you when you are trying to go to sleep, and the useless things it busies itself to prevent you from doing so. "Blue. I like the color blue. I should really look into that new laundry detergent." Random and more or less useless but they can't be stopped. Kinda like watching a marathon of some dumb TV show. You know it's dumb and wrong, but you can't help yourself.
I suppose it could be worse. I don't lay awake at night wondering what planet Tom Cruise is really from, or what shoes I will wear tomorrow (in all likelihood, it will be my new pink fuzzy slippers). I did however, for a brief moment, ponder whether "truthiness" was already a word, or if Colbert did in fact pull it out of his ass.
Labels: insanity?
posted by Fe at 4:57 PM
<< Home