WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?
By Stephen L. Tanner
In reviewing my title after it was announced, I realized that it could mean different things depending on which word is emphasized: What are you thinking? meaning, What exactly is going on in you head? What are you thinking? meaning, If I have misunderstood you, exactly what did you mean? What are you thinking? meaning, I've told you what I think; now give me your ideas. What are you thinking? meaning, You couldn't have been thinking at all. Perhaps what I am going to say touches upon more than one of these meanings.
Have you ever stopped to consider how many synonyms we have for the words think, thinking, and thought? Some are part of our active vocabulary and are familiar friends—words like ponder, muse, reflect, reason, meditate, contemplate. Some are part of our recognition vocabulary and, although we may not be on intimate terms with them, they are not total strangers—words like ruminate, cogitate, and ratiocinate. Others stretch our recognition vocabulary and seem a little exotic—words like ideate, mentate, and cerebrate. Still others seem like creatures from another planet and have to be beamed up by means of a dictionary—words like perpend, noesis, and lucubrate. The total of these single-word synonyms makes a hefty list. Then when we add phrases like puzzling over, mulling over, stewing over, soul-searching, putting on one's thinking cap, and using the old gray matter, the list rapidly expands. I gave up my count at around 50.
I suppose these many synonyms might be considered a tribute to the human mind, that extraordinary faculty and supreme treasure of the human species, which distinguishes us from other animals. I flatter myself with the notion that we need so many synonyms in order to delineate the subtle nuances of our rich mental activity. Then, with my head in the clouds, I stumble over the disconcerting fact that the most serious pondering I've done recently is whether I'll have fries with that. Suddenly my list of synonyms seems like linguistic overkill, mere lexicological extravagance or featherbedding. When I consider the mindless sensory overload that characterizes our electronic age, I begin to wonder if we need 50 synonyms for thinking any more than Samoan Islanders need 50 synonyms for snow.
Cultivating habits of reflection, introspection, and quiet pondering has probably been difficult in any age. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, most famous for poems like "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," observes in his book Aids to Reflection:
It is a matter of great difficulty, and requires no ordinary skill and address, to fix the attention of men on the world within them, to induce them to study the processes and superintend the works which they are themselves carrying on in their own minds; in short, to awaken in them both the faculty of thought and the inclination to exercise it. For alas! the largest part of mankind are nowhere greater strangers than at home. [(New York: Chelsea House, 1983), p. 9]
If this observation prompted an "alas" followed by an exclamation point from Coleridge in the early 19th century, it should prompt even greater alarm today, when in an apparent flight from solitude we eagerly eliminate every opportunity to be quietly alone with our thoughts. We are deluged with distractions and opportunities for diversion. Thousands of advertising appeals bombard us each day in the form of newspapers, magazines, circulars, signs and billboards, radio, television, and computers. Cabelas even wants to conscript me into the mighty army of advertising by having me wear their label on the outside of my fleece jacket. We are subjected to background music in every waiting room, restaurant, store, and telephone hold. I have even pumped gas to hits of the 70s. And try escaping television and cell phones at the airport.
Not only is sensory stimulation thrust upon us, we eagerly inflict it upon ourselves. Our homes have numerous handy switches for turning off silence. Our cars, wired for sound (super bass: ka-whump-chugga-whump-chugga-whump), entice us to dash about at the slightest pretext. Cell phones guarantee that we never have to close our mouths and ears for any dangerous interval of time. A generation of children is squandering time in computer games, which may sharpen reflexes but which certainly preclude reflection. They will develop eyes the size of cantaloupes and brains the size of peas, I heard somebody wisecrack. We are sucked into this flux of perpetual sensory stimulation to the point that solitude, if we have the apparent misfortune of stumbling upon it, seems odd and uncomfortable. Our overstimulated lives give point to Pascal's famous observation that the sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.
Some of us, unsettled by the overstimulation I am talking about, rush to the cults and cures of exotic or therapeutic meditation. The very name Transcendental Meditation is bound to seem attractively soothing to a population that has never known the privilege of meditating here and now in the midst of life. The Internet is glutted with meditation sites with names like the National Meditation Center and the American Meditation Institute. One of these, for example, the Meditation Society of America, has a "meditation station" on the Web that provides techniques from all traditions throughout the world. It invites us to "become a part of the fastest growing meditation community on the Internet" (http://www.meditationsociety.com). When we join we get a membership package that includes a T-shirt, two CDs, and a newsletter subscription. It seems we can't even engage in meditation, the most solitary of acts, without a support group. Other sites advertise meditation stools and assorted paraphernalia. There is even a book titled Meditation for Dummies. One site points out that meditation should not be confused with forms of concentration. Concentration focuses "our full undivided attention on a specific aspect of functioning of our mind and/or the body in order to accomplish a certain goal. . . . [Maybe they have in mind things like getting an education, holding a job, sustaining a marriage, or deciding whether there is a God who answers prayers.] In contrast, meditation is an exercise, aiming to prevent thoughts in a natural way, by deeply relaxing the physical body and then trying to keep the mind completely 'blank' with no thoughts whatsoever. . . . It seems that our Higher Self does not admit any impurities" (Tom J. Chalko, "Meditation," Thiaoouba Prophecy [http://www.thiaoouba.com/medit.htm], 1997). I wonder if many of us are doing a pretty good job of keeping our minds blank or in screen-saver mode without the use of specialized relaxation techniques. And I'm afraid my mind goes pretty blank sometimes without causing me to bump into my "Higher Self."
No, I don't think replacing mindless sensory overload with mindless forms of trendy meditation is a solution. What is desired is reflection that transpires within everyday lives and that evaluates those lives, assesses values, sets goals, solves problems—in short, that creates examined lives, the only kind that Socrates said are worth living. What is desired is the kind of pondering in the heart recommended repeatedly in the scriptures.
Unfortunately, our society provides little encouragement and few models for quiet pondering. We are celebrity worshipers, and thinkers among us don't earn celebrity status, partly because they are crowded out by film and rock stars, television personalities, and athletes, but mostly because productive pondering is an inner achievement not on external display. There is, of course, the famous statue of The Thinker, created by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin, but perhaps it is so famous because it stands alone among the myriad statues of other sorts of heroes and celebrities. One would think that if we truly revered thinkers, the figures of more of them would have turned up on pedestals.
Consider a moment the case of The Thinker. "Head in hand, the [familiar] nude figure sits in intense contemplation, twisting awkwardly to rest his right arm on his left knee" ("The Thinker by Auguste Rodin" [http://www.sculpturegallery.com/sculpture/the_thinker.html]). Rodin said of this figure, "What makes my Thinker think is that he thinks not only with his brain, with his knitted brow, his distended nostrils and compressed lips, but with every muscle of his arms, back and legs, with his clenched fist and gripping toes" (Quoted in "The Thinker by Auguste Rodin" [http://www.sculpturegallery.com/sculpture/the_thinker.html]). Who is this thinker anyway? The sculpture was originally conceived as the central figure for a monumental "Gates of Hell" portal, the theme of which was Dante's Divine Comedy. It was intended to represent the poet Dante in front of the Gates of Hell pondering his great poem. Rodin wrote the following about his creation:
The Thinker has a story. In the days long gone by I conceived the idea of the Gates of Hell. Before the door, seated on the rock, Dante thinking of the plan of the poem behind him . . . all the characters from the Divine Comedy. This project was not realized. Thin ascetic Dante in his straight robe separated from all the rest would have been without meaning. Guided by my first inspiration I conceived another thinker, a naked man, seated on a rock, his fist against his teeth, he dreams. The fertile thought slowly elaborates itself within his brain. He is no longer a dreamer, he is a creator. [Quoted in Joseph Phelan, "Who is Rodin's Thinker?" (http://www.artcyclopedia.com/feature-2001-08.html), Aug. 2001]
The Thinker didn't receive its present title until nearly 20 years after it was created.
Unfortunately, this figure has generated thousands of parodies, jokes, and commercial rip-offs. I suppose this is partly because, like the Mona Lisa, it is so famous. But I suspect a deeper reason. The world is not entirely at ease with thinkers. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk" (Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Stephen E. Whicher [Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957], p. 172). Moreover, we are slightly puzzled by a muscular thinker. We suffer from a preconception that separates brains from brawn. This shows up in popular culture in the stereotypical distinction between nerds and jocks, bookworms and bullies. Rodin himself sensed the incongruity between scrawny Dante and the muscular figures of his portal. The Thinker, as a sort of nerd with abs of steel, a poet body-builder, slightly bewilders us, and we respond with jokes and parodies. Based on our own mental habits, it may be hard for us to believe someone can think with knitted brow, distended nostrils, compressed lips, clenched fist, and gripping toes. Whether I am right about this or not, mass values and mass media certainly provide neither incentives nor models for constructive pondering.
I'm afraid that most of what is now playing in the theater of my mind is the kind of day-dreaming James Thurber portrays in his famous story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." You will remember that Walter Mitty is a brow-beaten husband accompanying his wife on a shopping trip. When left unattended he lapses into fantasies in which he is a naval pilot flying through a hurricane, a famed surgeon performing a stunning medical procedure, the greatest pistol shot in the world, an heroic military captain, and a man facing a firing squad with utter calm and disdain. When his domineering wife, who has trusted him to buy the overshoes she insists he wear, says, "Couldn't you have put them on in the store?" Walter replies "I was thinking. Does it ever occur to you that I am sometimes thinking?" (My World—and Welcome to It [London: Methuen, 1942], p. 18). Walter, of course, was not thinking or meditating; he was "Mittytating." And much of what passes for meditation among us could more accurately be classified as Mittytation. I confess that I am a master of Mittytation, with a nearly infinite list of credits as writer, producer, director, and starring actor of inner adventures. There is a sameness in plot, but plenty of variety in children rescued, buzzer-beating jump shots swished, ninth-inning homers belted, and award-winning books written. It takes up most of my spare time. When interrupted, I answer as Walter did: "I was thinking." Similarly, when my wife nudges me in church, I inform her that I was meditating.
Daydreaming is not all bad, of course, even though its self-indulgent forms are pretty pathetic. Our lives would be bland, after all, if bereft of inner fantasies. And in its more respectable, less self-indulgent forms, daydreaming is a vital aid to our creating and planning and self-constructing. Thoreau was correct when he advised, "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them" (The Portable Thoreau, ed. Carl Bode [New York: Viking, 1975], p. 563).
If daydreaming slips so frequently from meditation into Mittytation, aren't we much better off reading books? That's a comforting thought for those of us who love reading. I'm a literature professor. Reading for me is both vocation and avocation. What better way to improve my time, I flatter myself. But occasionally while reading I get the uneasy feeling that if I looked in the mirror I would see a child sucking on a binky. And each time I teach Emerson's "The American Scholar" I am stung by words like these: "Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings" (Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson, p. 68). Without "creative reading," Emerson warns, Man Thinking becomes merely the bookworm.
Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end, which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. [Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson, pp. 6768)
Continual passive reading can rob the mind of elasticity, and we reduce the chances of having thoughts of our own by using books as pacifiers. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer noted the paradoxical nature of balancing knowledge and thinking:
As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself; because only through ordering what you know by comparing every truth with every other truth can you take complete possession of your knowledge and get it into your power. You can think about only what you know, so you ought to learn something; on the other hand, you can know only what you have thought about. [Essays and Aphorisms (New York: Penguin, 1970), p. 89]
Reading can be an aid to thought, but only if it is thoughtful reading—what Emerson called creative reading. Even scripture reading, in order to be truly edifying, must be an exercise of the active soul. The scriptural admonitions are always to search, ponder, and meditate, and not simply to read.
I have focused on the difficulty of cultivating the habit of quiet reflection, which is an art as well as a habit, an art of which every person should be master, for if we are not thinkers, to what purpose are we human beings at all? Life consists, after all, in what we are thinking each day, and we should value our days by the number of clear insights we have gained. To appreciate the difficulty of focused pondering, try this thought experiment. Select a subject or problem and, with watch in hand, try to focus your mind upon it unswervingly for a determined number of minutes. The first time I attempted this I aimed for five minutes. Forty seconds later I was wondering why my watch was in my hand. Granting that your power of concentration may be greater than mine, you will find nevertheless that within seconds the random images and chance associations that form the currents of our stream of consciousness have swept you off course. Contemplation requires an inner check, a withdrawal from that mental-emotional flux long enough to reorient oneself and set a new course.
Do I have any suggestions for cultivating the art and habit of reflection? Only a meager few. First, I recommend pondering, at least occasionally, in words—in words in the sense of self-consciously selecting words and formulating sentences in a silent inner discourse. Pose questions to yourself and propose answers, hearing the sentences in your mind, revising them for clarity and precision and even eloquence. This requires focused concentration that reduces the swervings and deflections I described in the thought experiment I just spoke of. It gives order and continuity to our reflection and promotes a feeling of companionship with our inmost self, a more vivid awareness of the reasoning, creating voice within. This deliberate process of articulation becomes discovery as well as expression. More than one writer has said, "I don't know what I think until I have written it down." Something similar holds for inner composition as well. Words do not merely express our thoughts, they make our thoughts.
Second, I recommend pondering about words. Accustom yourself to reflect on the words you hear and read and use—on their derivation and history, their denotation and connotation, their plasticity to context. Don't take words for granted. Many common words serve multiple purposes, acquiring definite meaning only when placed in particular sentences. Thought and often careful reflection is required to interpret the specific instance. Many cases of fuzzy thinking, misunderstanding, indecision, and argument can be resolved by thoughtful clarification of terms. "For if words are not things," says Coleridge, "they are living powers, by which the things of most importance to mankind are actuated, combined, and humanized" (Aids to Reflection [New York: Chelsea House, 1983], p. xix).
Third, I recommend alert contemplation of the objects and event around us; their significance is often not immediately apparent. A cartoon in the New Yorker once portrayed the Red Sea parted and two Israelites walking across in conversation. They were participating in one of the greatest faith events in history, an event that would be rehearsed forever as evidence of God's power and providence, an event that is part of the glue that has held the Jews together as a distinct people down through the ages. One of the Israelites says to the other, "Ick, I think I just stepped on a fish." Don't be oblivious to the significance of what is going on about you. In 2 Ne. 4:16, Nephi says, "Behold, my soul delighteth in the things of the Lord; and my heart pondereth continually upon the things which I have seen and heard."
My most important recommendation is that we do not flee from solitude but embrace it jealously. It is the nursery of thoughts and aspirations that benefit society as well as the individual. Solitude is not to be feared. Matt. 14:23 tells us: "And when he had sent the multitude away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray, and when the evening was come, he was there alone." He was there alone. As a matter of fact from his 40-day fast in the wilderness to his death on the cross, when he cried out "My God, why hast thou forsaken me" (Matt 27:46), Christ was, in significant ways, alone. And so are we. Being alive means being in a body—a body separated from all other bodies. We can commune with others in important ways, but ultimately we are alone. It is our destiny. This is both the burden and benefit of our existence. It is what we do with our obligatory aloneness that matters. Only a creature with an impenetrable center in himself or herself is truly free and strong. We must not confuse solitude with loneliness. Loneliness is a terrible thing and all too common. It is endemic in our society and billions of dollars are spent to combat it. Much of the sensory overstimulation I mentioned is a response to the fear of loneliness. But ultimately, loneliness is conquered only by those who understand the benefits of solitude, the most important of which is quiet reflection—the examined life, the active soul. These alone are of lasting importance in a world of transience and triviality. I cite Emerson once again:
We dress our garden, eat our dinners, discuss the household with our wives, and these things make no impression, are forgotten next week; but, in the solitude to which every man is always returning, he has sanity and revelations, which in his passage into new worlds he will carry with him. [Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson, p. 273]
It is not what we reflect upon that is so important as the habit of reflection itself. Even pondering small things can have large consequences, whether it is Newton musing on the fall of an apple, Galileo contemplating a swinging censer, or a 14-year-old New York farm boy pondering a single verse in the New Testament. Moreover, ideas evolve and conclusions melt away in the heat of new experience. Few matters are settled completely or manifest in their fullness once and for all. But the impulse of the active soul toward quiet reflection remains the perennial source of personal fulfillment and communal benefit.
Stephen L. Tanner is BYU's Ralph A. Britsch Humanities Professor of English. As the 2004 Karl G. Maeser Distinguished Faculty Lecturer, Tanner delivered this forum address Oct. 26, 2004, in the Marriott Center. 
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