I was making a cup of coffee this morning when I found that my brain had slipped into an old familiar routine: having imaginary conversations with people who aren’t present. On the one hand, it may be useful to mentally practice conversational skills, especially if I expect to be in the company of a real person in the near future, but when I find myself having fantasy chats with Oprah, Barack, et. al., it’s time to consider whether my mental resources might be put to better use.
Having nipped this particular conversation in the bud, I started thinking about a strategy that I came up with years ago when I first discovered this kind of habitual behavior. I would say to myself, “There’s no one here but you.” But this morning I realized that that particular strategy was flawed in that it reinforced the idea of my self as an ongoing entity that could be alone or not.
If the social self is seen as an ongoing, constant, reality—as who I really am—then when it finds itself in the kitchen with no one else around it may trigger the feeling of loneliness. This is not a pleasant feeling, and it can motivate going out to find some other lonely human being to keep the social self company.
But the social self is not the only self that’s capable of taking over my brain. There are other selves that are totally content to be puttering around by themselves: watering the plants, reading, listening to music, playing with the computer, etc.
Loneliness is not the only option this brain has when it is physically alone, and all it has to do to escape loneliness is to activate one of its non-lonely selves. Having imaginary conversations is not conducive to remembering those other options.
So how might I better spend my time than chatting with people who aren’t here?
What happened this morning was that all conversation disappeared for a while. I became the actions that my body was performing, the sensory inputs it was processing: hands and arms moving dishes from the drainer to the shelf, body pivoting, bare feet on the floor, counter top, refrigerator, gurgling of the coffee pot… A stream of sensations that weren’t being experienced by “Norm”—this organism’s brain-constructed social identity—but that occurred without reference to any overriding entity.
There is a delectable sense of freedom that comes with this untethered flow of sensation. In contrast, conventional experience seems to happen inside a box, constrained by the bonds of language with its concepts and definitions.
Of course, as I’ve said, we can’t live in a social world without language, but it is possible, I think, with practice, to be aware that it is only a tool; to pick it up and use it only when needed. Like any tool, a certain level of maintenance is required–a little sharpening and lubrication, perhaps–but it needn’t be a constant preoccupation.
There is more to life than social encounters, and we don’t have to give up the joy and freedom of that life just to be ready for our next conversation.
(Click the title below this image to watch the movie.)
 |
|||
|
|
