Differences Between Thinking And Doing
Thoughts from a bored student in class.
Sometimes I get a sensation of realizing. The past 20 min, I just wasn’t in class, I mean I was, but I’d been randomly scrolling through thoughts that came to mind, people I cared about, things I wasn’t comfortable with, the girl I love, the things I’d love to do but am too scared of. Pause. And then I just see the blackboard in front of me, I change posture, and start using the pen that was in my hand, I start taking notes on the class subject. What was this switch? I am actively engaging my thinking with the objective world that surrounds me, understanding what my attention is choosing to focus on.
I am being, looking at my classmates, trying to understand what the teacher says and simplifying my way, forcing my consciousness to explore the unknown, with all the possible threats that I wouldn’t have if I didn’t move or talk to engage in communication. Although that on the long term doesn’t help because you do have to do things, you have the responsability of staying alive, and to continue so even though life makes it hard with all it’s tragedies.
A threat doesn’t mean someone maybe stabbing you behind the corner, I’m thinking in terms of how we want to feel, that is what we are, our feelings. So if asking that question in class in front of others can make you feel dumb and sad, you’ll choose not to, it’s a threat to your current feeling of being.
That’s why many times when very sad or upset, when our current state of feeling is so unbearable and the threats of feeling worse seem so little, you take big risks, you don’t care about the consequences, you insult, hit, curse, do something that hurts others. Our direction in choosing is all about the contrast in feelings.
So, our way of being is not that living is for granted, and from there on we have ups and downs. It’s more like most of our living is an evolution of a surviving act, minimizing possible interactions with the objective world that could make us feel worse.
And that leeds to the other side of the coin, the furthest option, opposite to the interaction that would make us feel worse, is the interaction that would make us feel best, although it’s not normally the best, it’s generally the least worst. But still, it’s a value structure, and we create it ourselves when choosing decisions of being.
Then comes thinking. Whenever you generally say “I’m thinking”, you are normally not doing anything, you actually stop in between ‘doings’ to think. It’s similiar to dreaming, but with a conscious control of idea-relation, it’s use is to reconfigure and create more abstract concepts to gain understandings and find better solutions to our problems, knowing the how to do.
When we are doing, our mind is bouncing it’s attention with what it sees nearby, the objective world. This kantian vision can be expanded, we spend more time with some objects specifically, we choose based on the potential future doing of that option, a book to read, food to eat, a hammer to repair.
We don’t normally give attention to the objects until they loose that practical potentiality, like when our car breaks down, or when we can’t find the charger. So we have a subjective reality that is related to objects with potentiality for options that will make us feel good, we choose then for a reason, our life is choosing, that is who we are: everything we’ve ever chosen from the possibilities our surroundings gave us.
Hope someone finds this interesting, I write these types of texts to sort out my own thinking, and am happy to share it with whoever’s attention decided this is worthwhile! Any ideas are apreciated, I don’t get offended, I know lots of people know more than me. Thank you.
