I can’t remember a time when my mind wasn’t busy. For as long as I have memories, I have had a mind with thoughts streaming across it like vehicles on a highway. Sometimes it’s rush hour and sometimes it’s late at night but still the highway has a regular flow of traffic.
The traffic need not always be troublesome; I can step back sometimes and just watch it all happen. The detachment feels good. I imagine that I’m on a bench, by the side of the road, and the sun is out, the sky is clear, and, if I close my eyes, I can ignore the whir of mental momentum and bask in the sunshine warming my face. The two and four-wheeled products of my mind still roll on by. But I don’t always need to see what their make and model is or what state they are from. And I don’t always need to wonder where they may be going.
They are strange things, those collections of thoughts, images, ideas, dreams, and ideas we call minds. They allow us to think, to memorize, to write words in a sentence, to read that sentence and understand it, to read that sentence – the first one in this paragraph – and recognize that the word ideas is listed twice.
My mom once told me that she would sometimes watch me coming home in the afternoon, walking up our sidewalk and short driveway. “You were always talking to yourself,” she said. “Even if your lips weren’t moving, I could tell that there was some story going on inside you.”
I picture Mom standing by the living room window and I can see what she saw as I plodded up the driveway. The kid has short hair, a big head, and ears that might give his body some lift if the wind is just right. He is wearing grey trousers and a white shirt, or an oversized football uniform, or baggy dungarees and a poorly fitting jacket. Things aren’t tucked in. There are dirt and grass stains, on at least one article of clothing. There are probably some grazes, cuts or abrasions on his cheeks, elbows, or knees. He is mumbling and muttering to himself about something, one hand or perhaps two gesturing as he re-enacts some event, real or imagined.
I remember what that kid was thinking. There was usually some story of struggle, some tale of triumph in the face of adversity. The kid wasn’t dreaming he was superman. No, he was imagining how he would do this thing better next time, or tell that person the right thing, or break free based on sheer will from the drudgery of some sort of injustice or oppression and find his day in the sun, his sweet taste of victory. This kid wasn’t as fast on the actual football field as he was in his imagination. No matter. That imagination was always letting the kid see some type of success that was either unrealistic or unimportant.
He thrived on seeing himself overcome adversity – at least doing so in his mind’s eye.
Although the details of the story changed over the years, the basic script did not. Somewhere, inside the neural platform of my brain, the storyline of challenge, struggle, and triumph was etched into the basic circuitry of how my mind liked to interpret the world.
I can watch that circuitry in action, even now, decades later. It runs like a predictable loop at a racetrack. It has the same types of stereotypical barriers, challenges, and responses. It always aims at some sort of success or recognition, some type of acknowledgement.
We like these types of stories. And why shouldn’t we? They are archetypal, as described by Jung. Mine followed the basic structure of the hero’s journey, as outlined by Joseph Campbell. They map the basic prototype of protagonists we identify with in movies, novels, even the histories of nations. They are predictable. They are cliche. And yet they are sometimes so comfortable. Because they are loaded with culture, values.
I’ve been watching my stories recently. Sometimes, I’ll actively try to redirect them, in the same way that a change in a road will redirect cars and trucks. It’s funny how the stories will still try to get back to the original plot line. I can take them off on a odd tangent, aim them in a direction that is both foreign and freeing, and then, like homing pigeons temporarily thrown off by a storm, they will fight to find their bearings and their way home.
That’s when I laugh. I watch the stories veer off course, lurch back towards where they expected to go, and I lean back against the bench, feel the warm boards against my back, raise my gaze to the heavens, and breathe. And I smile. And I breathe again.
I am more than my neural circuitry. I am searching for contentment inside that profound realization.