I’ve been reading The Fellowship of the Ring again lately, and this time its struck me just how often characters sit and think things through. While this doesn’t happen “on camera” most of the time, it’s nonetheless there. The wiser the character the more they spend time thinking, sometimes far into the night.
Pondering is not something we’re big on these days. “The life of the mind,” just doesn’t get the airplay it used to. Not that anyone has time any more to just sit and think. If we’re lucky the closest thing we have is conversations with friends in which we think aloud at one another and bounce ideas about. Granted, those can be quite fun, interesting, and fulfilling conversations, but they’re not as common as they should be.
The other alternative is during boring, repetitive work when the brain can mostly roam free, but even then the thought processes are regularly interrupted. No, just sitting and thinking is, if not out of favor, certainly out of practice. And I wonder if we’re not worse off for it. Or at least I would if I had the time to ponder such things.
Perhaps this is why I blog, though I’m not sure that is even a reasonable substitute.
Even when we do have time like when we’re driving, we tend to feel the need to plug into electronic devices for music or audio books, which are good but also eliminate the possibility of just thinking about things.
As life has gotten easier, and thrills cheaper, and gratification more instant, yes, thinking has become a lost art. I hate to beat a dead horse, but, the “logic” displayed in the average meme-pic and how people seem to consider the “logic ” irrefutable, speaks volumes … long, lugubrious, volumes of lamentations.
Agreed! I have seen numerous mindless shares where people didn’t check to see if there’s any truth in it (the one about there are 5 Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays this month and it’s lucky and only happens once every 823 years comes to mind –most of the time there aren’t 5 weekends that month and the pattern repeats much more frequently than 823 years). But hey, Facebook quiz says I’m going to live 41 more years. That will make me 97. Gotta be true because I gave it my name! 🙂