Rebel Yell! What Are You Thinking?

You know how to search for what you want. You just open your browser of choice. Google, Safari, for the privacy conscious, Duck Duck Go.

I keep being told people are using social media sites as search engines now. So maybe you go on there. On TikTok. Or Instagram. You type in what you want. Except you probably don’t want it that bad. You’re just searching.

Maybe you start typing… but swipe off before you finish. Something else is more interesting. Someone texts you. Maybe you’re halfway through reading a Wiki page- but it’s boring. Whatever.

We look everything up all the time because we can. There’s some actor you can’t name in a show. Look it up. There’s a recipe you can’t quite remember. Look it up. There’s a train timetable you want to double check, a clothing range you plan to browse, a weird fact your co-worker told you that you didn’t really believe, so you want to see if it’s true or not. You look it up.

But wait. Breath in.

You might be able to remember that actor.

Breath out.

Where have you seen him before?

Breath in.

Do you remember when it was?

Breath out.

Can you place him in another film?

Breath in.

The name comes to you.

Or another example: when I was a child, if I lost something, my grandmother would say to me, ‘Where did you last see it?’ No doubt this has been said to you too. It’s annoying. And yet. If you think back. To when you were holding it. Where you were standing. What was going through your head. It comes back to you. You know where it is.

When you feel that flicker in your gut that we call instinct, reflection alone will show you how best to respond to it.

This must seem pointless. Why rack your brains for answers if you don’t have to? You have better things to do, right?

Welcome to the Lost Art of Reflective Thinking.

It is lost because we don’t do it. We are socialised to be action! people. Taking our time looks lazy, weak, and indecisive.

It is an art because it requires creativity and imagination. It requires big picture thinking that is marvellous in scope and exciting in depth.

Reflecting means thinking things through. Applying yourself to pondering. Working it out like a kid beavering away at his maths homework. It’s how we cultivate theories, figure out problems, learn to identify patterns… in our head. And I believe that when you feel that flicker in your gut that we call instinct, reflection alone will show you how best to respond to it.

When you start deliberating, you’ll be surprised how the thought develops in your mind, just like a photograph in a dark room. Slowly, slowly revealing all the outlines and colours, becoming clearer, until you understand.

Yet these days we live by information processing. We react to stimulus and execute like machines. We reply to every email as fast as it comes in, we field questions from colleagues about immediate tasks, and track the relentless news cycle. All of this is fast thinking. It feels good. It’s like physically running through tasks on a life-size to-do list.

Fast thinking Gets Things Done. But it is also the mental equivalent of jumping from cloud to cloud, going through never-ending levels of a video game that can only lead to the grave.

Fast thinking Gets Things Done. But it is also the mental equivalent of jumping from cloud to cloud, going through never-ending levels of a video game that can only lead to the grave. So, what if the electric impulses of fast-think dopamine aren’t enough?

Then you might think about other ways of thinking. There’s meditation. For all its wellness-hype popularity these days, meditation is misunderstood. It doesn’t really mean ‘think nothing’. It is a mental exercise, a spiritual quest that involves the active engagement of your faculties. It is a state of being that requires you to nose about in the unknown like a terrier on the hunt. In Christianity, it means deliberately focusing on some part of a scripture and trying to pierce through to a deeper meaning. It is going further inward. Meditation is the ultra-concentrated partner of reflection.

For advanced practitioners, there’s contemplation. No, it’s not the same thing. I like to take its original meaning. Contemplation, according to the bible, meant ‘resting’ in God. It is learning to sense God when he appears to you, in the hopes of achieving a divine union.

You don’t need to start believing in God if you don’t. You adapt contemplation for you. You can ‘rest’ in your body, in your life, in this moment. You can find wonder by sitting comfortably on a warm day and gazing at the sky. You can learn to really feel the magic of just being alive, and attain a kind of divine union with your surroundings.

In the 16th century, St. Gregory the Great called contemplation a ‘knowledge’ that led to bliss. This seems like a healthy kind of overthinking. A rebellious act of adoration for a life we often forget to enjoy.

True contemplation is to look at something without asking yourself how you could make money out of it, or whether it would need a filter when you posted it. It is to shelve analysis and wilfully forget how to inflict the modern pastime of criticism. It is a long, loving look at reality, without judgement.

It is searching for nothing.