It seems to me that many people jog happily along with little or no change to their circumstances. Its only when something upsetting happens that they begin to think.
Usually some unacceptable incident or issue causes a rage and then out of that comes some kind of thoughts and rationality, towards solving a problem or making the situation better.
There are also events which are good news and these also inspire new thoughts and ideas.
I know we can all add into a conversation the usual standard things that keep the chatter flowing, and generally these don't cause us to think. They are usually on hand and can be dispensed easily.
So what gets your old brain cells really working for their wages? Is it fury or good fortune? What is it that you know makes you a different thinking person thereafter? Cheeseburger and chips or Confucius?
My son was starting his GCSE's with plans to go to uni. My sister asked me - who are you going to talk to when he's gone?
I thought - and thought and - as soon as he finished his last GCSE I left my conversation-less, living in a rut husband and started living.
It was hard, very hard at times, and I don't just mean financially. But my life is now far more interesting than it was then and I'm still thinking.
I don't think I had realy been thinking for years before that - not properly.
I've not had an incident close enough to me that has caused me to think and then become a different thinking person thereafter, however I do get lost in thought, enough that I get engrossed in my thinking to the exclusion of those around me. They can say something to me and I don't hear it, so in that sense I guess my brain is working, but thinking about it now it's seldom on important matters, an example would be cake mix.
We don't cook in our house, but I was fortunate to be round the sister in laws house when she was making a cake, it was even more fortunate that I won the coveted bowl and spoon she had used for the mixture as her kids were out. Now I've loved cake mix since I was a kid, wouldn't give you tuppence for the cake but the mix...heaven, finger in, face in, anything to get every last bit. I've never understood why anyone would want to take a sweet, smooth, soft foodstuff that helter skelters round the mouth with flavour and turn it into a dry, dull thing like a cake, anyways thats what got me thinking.
I know you can buy cake and dry cake mix in the shops, but they dont sell a wet mix, one that you could just rip open and eat. Could it be done? was I the only person who liked it enough to buy it as a sweet treat? How big a spoon and bowl would I need if it took off?....and a whole list of other thoughts that were deep enough that I was glad when I went to bed and forgot it, cos it just kept pinging around in my head and wouldn't go away, even though I knew I was in La La Land again.
Probably not along the lines you were thinking about, but in short, yes at times I do think and think very deeply, unfortunately those thoughts are, on reflection, mostly shite.
Thanks for the input folks.
What I get now and then is insights into things. And I feel that I have thought about them and understand them. So I get a sense of having done something to achieve it.
Some of these are generated through rage and others when I just happen to be in a carefree mood. So is it necessity or indulgence which brings on thinking?
I would not want to be in a job where I was always under pressure, to come up with new ideas etc. But people work in advertising and design and that is everything to them.
Do swingers need to think?
Dave I think your product is a fantastic idea.
The closest I can think of is that Ben and Jerrys Cookie Dough flavour ice cream.
But the joy of cake mix straight from the bowl ohhhh blisss.
All sorts of stuff. Sometimes it's a throwaway remark, sometimes a philosophical debate.
I love thinking but I think some people can over-think - sometimes you have to go off gut instinct and be spontaneous.
But thinking rocks.
Several times I have convinced myself that I have thought something out and it seems good to me. But then I meet other people who have thought quite differently about the same thing, and in their own way are quite right also. That different perspectives can seem apart but are in fact doing something very similar, even if both sides can't see it. That they are mostly in accordance but can only see the minor differences as major problems, which is enough to convince each other that they have a real argument.