A Vow To Stop Thinking

Try an experiment with me. Take a second, and try to be completely aware of your body. Start with your heartbeat; think about it for a minute or two, see how fast it’s beating, whether it’s regular or not. Now try breathing. Not deep breathing, normal breathing, like you’re carrying on a conversation. How often do you do it? How long and deep are you inhaling? Exhaling? Are you breathing at a steady pace? Is it faster than usual? Slower? Try to keep that rhythm. Try to count how many breaths you take in a minute. Now, without getting up or doing anything else, let your body take over again. Stop thinking about it.

If you’re like me (and I hope someone out there is, but there’s a good chance they’re not), that wasn’t very easy. You can do it and not suffocate — how creepy would it be if I just killed you? — but it’s not natural. It’s something so simple, that you do every waking (and sleeping) moment of the day. You’ve had more practice with it than reading, speaking, walking, you name it. But if you try to control it yourself, it starts to seem a little complicated. If you google “thinking about breathing” you’ll get tons of people who say they get stuck for days, even weeks, doing it.

(If I actually did get you stuck, chew a piece of gum, or start singing, and voila.)  If the breathing trick didn’t work on you, try anything you can do that takes some coordination. Typing, playing an instrument, juggling. While you’re doing it, try to examine exactly what you’re doing, down to the smallest detail. Things that are usually easy for you, seem complicated. Now, that’s not a serious problem. But imagine what you’re thinking about is something genuinely difficult to grapple with: death, eternity, predestination, your self and your motivations for every action. It’s not easy.

Philosophy is a perfect example of that. For thousands of years, philosophers have tackled the same issues, with no new information, and come up with the most outlandish things. Zeno is the classic case.  Zeno’s paradox goes something like this: imagine you’re trying to get from the chair to the door,which is 10 feet away. That’s a little far; set a halfway point instead. Walk 5 feet. 5 feet to go. Now, cut that in half, and walk 2.5 feet. You’ve still got 2.5 feet to go. Keep setting checkpoint after checkpoint, and you’ll get closer and closer to the door. But you’ll always have some distance left. You’ll never make it! You’ll always have an infinite number of checkpoints left ahead!

Zeno sat there, thinking about this problem (as the Greek ponderers tended to do?), and came up with a very easy solution. It is impossible. You can’t walk to the door. All motion is impossible. If you feel like you’re moving, it’s just your mind playing a trick on you. Nobody can cross that many checkpoints.

It sounds ridiculous, but it’s very similar to what philosophers do all the time. Like the mind-body problem. You feel like you have this free will and soul, or selfhood. But you’re just made up of particles, and a machine that was built like you would act exactly the same way. Solution? Obvious. You don’t have a self! That “you” you think you are isn’t real. You’re just being tricked into thinking “you” exists, when clearly, science says “you” isn’t anything special at all; just a very advanced algorithm. “You” is a lie you’re telling yourself, a lie which says this hypothetical “you” is “conscious” and can “think”. “You” “thinks” “you” exists, because “you” doesn’t “know” any better.

That’s not just a joke, it’s a serious belief among philosophers and cognitive sciences. Too much thinking and hypothetical reasoning about themselves from an outside perspective, leads them to conclusion that the one thing we all experience all the time, consciousness and selfhood, isn’t real.

Eight years ago, a friend’s older brother took his life. The day after they found out, I came over to visit with my family. I remember walking to the door, having no idea what I’d say or do — I was  12 years old. They opened the door. My mom hugged his mom, crying. His dad sat at the table making phone calls, shaken. And I walked upstairs, where my friend was sitting. We were silent for a minute, obviously not knowing how to deal with the situation. For lack of a better gesture, I took out my new pack of grape Bubble Tape and asked if he wanted any. He took it, and we sat down and started playing video games. Star Fox 64. For about an hour. Then his youth pastor came, and took us to the movies. We saw Shrek. I remember sitting in the theatre uncomfortably. Then the movie started, and, a little guiltily, we started laughing at it. Even the pastor. Sitting there, the day after heartbreaking news, watching Shrek.

Of course, it wasn’t like that forever. There were times of grief, pain, and shock for the family, and to a much lesser (but still very real) extent, us. I have such an enormous respect for them and their ability to move on — if I ever did injustice to their loss or manipulated it to tug on some heartstrings for a cheap tearjerker, I would never forgive myself. If you (a member of the family) are reading this, I sincerely hope I haven’t cheaply used your story. Just, at that moment, the realities of life were too big for us. We couldn’t think about the enormity of what had happened, and at 12 years old we weren’t expected to yet. Our job, as the pastor knew, was to try and smile.

I really think there’s something to that. Not just an analogy, but a very important, necessary aspect of life there. There are times when thinking is necessary, and coping with the realities of life or finding the answers are noble goals. But there are times when it’s impossible — and inhuman — to keep at it. Instead, we learn through the full human experience: part thoughts, and part feelings.

I will never write a foolproof syllogism proving the existence of God. I will never  understand how I can be a free agent in a physical world. And I’ll never justify, fully, every moral conviction I have. I’ve tried, and it always leads to a complicated, lifeless, dead-end. It leads to hollow cynicism and self-righteous pseudo-intellectual crap. Words, words, words. And, like breathing, it’s hard to go back to simplicity and ease once you’ve started.

I’m accepting that I cannot hope to understand everything. And I won’t destroy myself trying, like so many after college seem bound to do. There’s a time for asking the hard questions and grappling with the issues, and a time to shrug them aside and, like a grieving kid laughing at his third viewing of Shrek, live.