Time to think

Someone recently told me, referring to my blog, that I should write more. This made me think about my reasons for not writing more frequently. Life has become a marathon. Everyone I speak to, myself included, comment on how busy they are. What happened to all those advertised products that were supposed to give us more time?

People don’t have time to make food, so they buy processed food. Our computers get faster processors to make us working more efficient and faster. Our cars get more powerful and faster even though we don’t need more speed. We get irritated when service takes longer than we think we should be served. It feels like we are being programmed to act like machines. Work faster, quicker, more efficient year on year because our rationale is to make more money or to be able to pay the bills or to have more time for ourselves. But this seems to never to happen. We might make more money, but then we somehow find more things to buy, to save more time, which never happens.

We are so busy doing things that we struggle to do nothing. Have you observed people at a seminar? They constantly fiddle with something. Either a phone to read their emails and SMS or they make notes of things they have just remembered. During breaks they rush of to listen to their messages and return calls.

I thought of these things today during a mountain bike race. It is strange what fatigue can do to you. You reach a point where you get tired and exhausted and that’s when your body seems to move into an element of its own. Your mind become clear and you stop worrying about the daily stuff. You focus on what happening to you and your body there and now. It is as if you now have time to really think and focus on what is important.

Many philosophical books have been written on this subject. Some say you can reach it during meditation, others by means of physical endurance. People like Gurjief used physical labour in his teachings, Carlos Castaneda writes about the time he spend in nature in complete silence to be able to “see” and some religions like Buddhism makes use of meditation to quieten the mind. Not that I think religion per se is a good example to get yourself time to think more.

Listening to a preacher, rabbi or cleric is about as good as sitting in front of the television watching a soapie. It is just another form of hypnotising and won’t make you think more. In fact religion bars critical thinking; you should just accept everything you’re told, like a machine… We are constantly being fed by lots and lots of information, but we don’t have time to reflect and think. Maybe if we do, we will see more things in this world.