Saturday 7 March 2015

Thoughts About Thinking

 In your heart, 
keep one still, secret spot
 where dreams may go and sheltered so
 may thrive and grow.
~Louise Driscoll


I've been thinking a lot lately . . . about thinking. About how the noise of our lives can inhibit deep thoughts and the processing of the circumstances in our lives. How it is so easy to hear or read an opinion online and give agreement to it, or not, without even pausing to think about it. "What are they really saying? Do I agree with some parts and not others? Or do I swallow it whole? Throw the baby out with the bathwater?"

How my own creatives gifts can be stifled if I fail to carve out some time to just be still and think. Sometimes, when my thinker gets stuck on a certain issue that I just can't seem to find the answer to, a single distraction such as going for a walk or working on a puzzle will allow the very idea I was waiting for to come out of hiding. I am convinced that there are answers to be found, ideas to surface and dreams to be birthed that can present themselves only when all external voices are silenced.

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding 
except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson 

great, present-day thinker that I really admire, Lance Wallnau, related this week in a Facebook post that he often has people ask if they can purchase his notebooks. The answer is no. "They are the blank canvas upon which I capture and refine ideas from all types of sources."  In the same post he mentions that the inventor of the light bulb, Thomas Edison, filled over 3500 notebooks with his thoughts and ideas over the course of his lifetime. The take-away here, for me, is the importance of recording those thoughts and ideas.

In the midst of a noisy family gathering with brothers and sisters, grandmas and grandpas, aunts and uncles and cousins, this little miss in the photo above was able to tune out all the noise, all the voices and give herself fully to the project at hand. You can almost see the wheels turning in her mind, so focused she is.  I wish I was more like her, but as I am not, I will endeavor to cultivate an atmosphere conducive to generating ideas and solutions that answer the need of the moment.

Think left and think right and think low and think high.
 Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try.
~Dr. Suess

Linking with Photo Art Thursday

9 comments:

  1. Pretty powerful thoughts about thinking. I love the treatment of the photo of Miss P but the words really spoke to me. Love you Andrea.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The ability to turn off is a habit well worth cultivating and one which too many have lost. Thank you for reminding me how important it is to take time away from the noise and let my own thoughts float to the surface.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Your photo of Miss P is beautiful.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Andrea you have this spot on! My brain never seems to stop working. I'm going to start journaling to see if that will untangle all of those crazy thought tangles! Your photo is beautiful! Love it!

    ReplyDelete
  5. this is purely beautiful... and gosh! the photo!!!

    ReplyDelete
  6. "a single distraction such as going for a walk or working on a puzzle will allow the very idea I was waiting for to come out of hiding." Oh my, this is so true. I can't tell you the dozens of times I would keep at something relentlessly to get a solution and it just wouldn't come, and then someone would pull me away from the impasse. That separation never failed to bring the ideas to the surface. This took me back so many years to one particular place in time when a group of friends pulled me out of my apartment and, literally, into the light...my own light...that was right there in me, but needed "space" to emerge. This piece was so well-developed. Thank you, Andrea Dawn.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Wonderfully capture moment and edited photo. To go along with perfect quotes and thoughts. I agree that there has to be quiet times, to be still, to rejuvenate to be able to create. But it is hard, at times.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Good wisdom from Dr. Suess. We're reading that book regularly around here.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Yes. I believe, as we often seem to be, we are walking similar paths, dear lady. With all that I have going on... the work, the caretaking... I came to a space where silence was deafening. Being one who prays and meditates, it scared me to think I was having so much trouble just being quiet. Your words (and Emerson's -- thank you) reverberate the tiny epiphany I had last week. Thank you, Andrea. And thank you for knocking... I needed to be reminded that I still have a door that opens to the world. :)

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for stopping by . . . appreciate your comments.