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If your mind does not want to speak, then let it remain silent, forgo content creation, forgo productivity: rest. If you cannot rest, read. The poor mind, its hemispheres worn and frayed like an old pair of socks. In a hundred years, we will look at the mind the way we look at old industrial sites: relics of blight.
Lately, I’ve been able, maybe for an hour or two, slip into a slightly different brain state than what I’m used to. I’m not sure how to describe it. My active, chattering mind shuts up a bit, the back, the lump of matter behind the cortex seems to take the rudder. New metaphors, new constellations, new emotions emerge rapidly from the state. It can be triggered by breathing, active self-examination, like putting the mind in a hot bath, forcing the muscles to unclench. But I’m not merely trying to relax — I’m trying to mine whatever poetic potential still resides within me; my active, conscious, cortex-y mind is scarred, marred by scar-tissue. I feel lucky, sometimes, that I came of age a few years before the smartphone; a few years later, and I doubt I would be either a reader and a writer. And even now it’s difficult. Good habits erode, bad habits grow like weeds.
The difference between a self-help writer and a philosopher is that a philosopher doesn’t believe that the self can be helped, but tries anyway.
