The mental snowball

Sometimes for fun and sometimes torture, I pay close attention to my thoughts.

Often when we feel icky we will attribute that feeling as "coming out of nowhere" or wondering why we all of a sudden feel a certain way. I have noticed through this quirky observation just how quickly we can manifest the most bizarre sequence of thoughts without noticing the middle, often just the beginning or the end result. So, for fun and as I stated, sometimes torture, here is what roughly ten seconds of thought can look like:

The other day a friend was telling me about doing some yard work and was explaining to me this rather elaborate assortment of nuts, seeds and plants he had found in these various parts of the yard. These goodies had been slowly accumulated by a resident squirrel who had recently disappeared and thought to be prey to another animal. End of story.

My thought process:

Awww...poor squirrel, driven by his biological instinct to hoard, spent all of his life storing these goodies for the future just to be eaten. Well, I guess if he hadn't been eaten he would have been well prepared. Smart squirrel. (should have been end of story but no..)

Mmmm..come to think of it, humans are a lot like that, we spend all our time slaving and accumulating stuff we probably don't need or perhaps will never use. Where is the joy and meaning in that, it's really kind of pathetic how we often do it unnecessarily. Mmm...that kind of reminds me of Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich, or About Schmidt which is sort of a modern day version of Tolstoy's story. What is success anyway? Who defines it and why do we let others define it for us? I should read Man's Search for Meaning again, I think it had the answers. Man, what is the meaning of it all anyway?...

This went on sadly much longer, however I think it is good practice to see where we can go from point A to point B and maybe we could dissect and revise our thoughts. Either that or slap them around with a little reality. It seems that somewhere along our process we get attached to a certain thought and we think it is our reality and we don't often spend the time trying to figure out just how we got there, we just sort of blindly accept it.

My revision:

I wish I was a squirrel, then I wouldn' t have to deal with all these thoughts.



re-blog from previous writing as this is how today went

Things I think -Inspired by peach pie

This is an excercise I like to play with. Taking whatever I am doing an trying to make an anology to life, love, whatever. This made me kind of chuckle.

Once you have baked your own pie, with your own hands, nothing from a store will quite comfort you again in the same way. Yet in a pinch, it can still satisfy a craving but will offer minimal comfort. The same can be said about the difference between true love and companionship. They diverge at the moment when your soul is not wholly involved in the process.

Even when I still resided in the city, you could find me, in a flowing skirt, flat shoes and an apron, recreating the days on the farm by spending my week-ends baking after I spent a a week with the souless concrete beneath me. In the country, everything has soul, it is alive, it’s essence can be found beneath your feet and in the wind that blows. it is all alive. In the contry you bake to enhance your health, your family, your relationships,the community and your soul when it is feeling down. it is an enhancement and not a replacement. Rebound lovers are often an attempt to recreate an aliveness that occurs naturally when you cup the chin of your true love in your feathery gloves on a cold winter’s day.