A little boy in second grade raised his hand presumably to ask a question. Instead he made a pretty profound statement.
“When I get bored, I like to write poetry or short stories. Sometimes, I’ll draw pictures next to them. Thank you.”
The event was a school reading of America Gives Thanks in Charlotte. The teachers were astonished that this specific boy made this specific comment. Apparently, he was prone to getting in trouble and they didn’t envision him as being particularly thoughtful or introspective.
A few days earlier, I overheard one of my daughters and her friend comment with admiration on how impressed they were that another friend was so comfortable spending time alone in their own head. He didn’t even need music to run to!
Our minds are indeed powerful things when left to their own devices. One of the reasons we are so prone to distraction is to avoid the constant chirping of our own thoughts. This sentiment presumably drove Noah Kahan to name his mental health non-profit, The Busyhead Project.
I know in my own life, there is no one I have “talked to” more than my own mind. They haven’t always been pleasant or positive conversations. Our mind has the power to make us feel angry, stressed, sad, frustrated, guilty, insufficient, unworthy, unsatisfied and so on and so on. Often with only a few words.
Yet at the same time, it is where our best ideas (in fact all of our ideas) come from. It can produce a smile with a simple thought, spark wonder and awe with the world around us, raise questions and curiosity we’ve never considered, fill us with gratitude and love and so on and so on.
It is not simple enough to tell ourselves to just focus on the good around us or see the world as a glass half full. That’s not how the mind works. There is nothing more complex in the world than our brains. The very act of thinking or hearing ourselves in our own heads, blows my mind.
It is an ongoing and lifelong process of self-awareness and work to understand how and why we think what we do. To feel comfortable in our own heads at all times – good, bad and ugly. To be brave enough to avoid distraction, to spend time alone in our own heads or like that little boy to welcome boredom is an act of generosity and creativity to ourselves.
I spent so much of my younger days having unproductive and unhelpful conversations with myself. It felt like a constant battle that left me scarred and unfulfilled.
There is a saying that “to conquer your mind, it is to conquer the world.” While at first blush it seems wise, the metaphor of battle doesn’t seem useful to me.
My mind is a collection of all the “me’s” I’ve ever been – a child, an adolescent, a young adult and now a middle aged man. It is processing and making sense of an unfathomable amount of experiences, feelings and information that it has been exposed to since the moment I was born.
I don’t want to conquer that, I want to embrace it. I want to be kind to it. To show it grace and patience. To better understand it. To be in awe of it. And mostly to come to peace with it. Which, of course, is to come to peace with myself.
So during this holiday season as you spread holiday cheer with your family and friends, I hope you take the time to do the same with your own mind. Peace be with you both.
This Week’s Recommendation. Our mind has funny ways of seeing the world and can find beauty in the most unusual places. My friend recently published a book of photography, Puddle. Over the last several years, he’s roamed the New York City pointing his camera at small pools of water and finding in their reflections wonderful shots of everyday life. Check it out.
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