Some Thoughts About Thinking
Photo: Jet trail over the Hudson River at daybreak, April 14 2023
Real thinking begins in nothingness and ends in nothingness.
One doesn't mean by this that thinking is nothing; yet it emerges from a darkness of the soul, a place that is impenetrable to the ordinary processes of the mind. It invariably arrives whole of itself, with everything in it; and in that wholeness, paradoxically, there are no words whatsoever, even though that wholeness is transformed into words of the instant that thought becomes tangible.
The origin of the word think in Latin comes from the verb to weigh, to evaluate by comparison; to understand how heavy something is. By association we can understand that it means an attempt to discover the center of gravity for a question, because weight and gravity are inseparable. Gravity, furthermore, is an invisible force whose presence is, to physics and science, inexplicable in terms of particles in matter. We can find no material particle that mediates it; yet it exists and imparts its force to everything. Thought is actually much like this once considered carefully.
In English, the word comes from a Proto-Germanic root bankijana, roughly rendered in the English alphabet, which encompasses the meaning of gratitude, thanks, and remembrance as well as thought, mind, and consideration. It is thereby understood that the essential nature of thought involves emotional or feeling processes (gratitude and thanks) as well as technical ones such as remembrance and evaluation.
These etymological observations deepen and broaden our perception of the word; yet they don't give us any clues as to how one might go about thinking. The process is, in us, apparently quite automatic, even mechanical; and so, as the saying goes, we don't even bother thinking about it. We just do it and accept the results as though they were unquestionable.
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