THINKING



I spend a lot of time processing my daily experiences. I suppose I spend more time doing this than many people, judging from the human behaviors I see around me. I do not state this from a position of moral or intellectual superiority. I claim neither.

I am obsessive by brain chemistry. So, I have an edge in the processing department. The down side is that edge can become a wall of circular thinking. I have had to develop the mental and emotional skills to move on from some mental processes which could paralyze me. Pursuing the professional practice of nursing was a good step for me. It overwhelmed me in its early stages, when I worked as a nursing assistant in a hospital while attending nursing school. This flood of emotion and having to process them forced me to develop new ways of thinking and integrating emotions into my awareness of my own behaviors.

Thinking on my feet has developed over the years of working with people in difficult situations. Thinking on my feet simply means being thoughtful (mindful) in the moments of every day. It is a valuable form of internal multi-tasking. My daily meditation helps. It is that time every afternoon when I shut down my mind to a degree. This has increased my awareness of when my mind is working as I wish to and when it isn't. Meditation helps me to identify and correct stresses I am inflicting on myself.

More thinking and less doing would benefit our society, in my opinion. The constant distraction of electronica creates the illusion of doing something useful. It really is just an illusion. Doing nothing, meditating and reflecting are paradoxically productive. I fear that our "developed" civilization is headed down a path of producing more and more distractions at the expense of our humanity.