Embracing the Fleeting Nature of Thought

In which I discuss being content with existing in the present moment rather than obsessively capturing every thought that passes through my head.

I went for an hour long a few days ago, inspired largely by some of Cal Newport’s advice in “Digital Minimalism”. In the middle of the walk, I had the unfortunate realization that even though I had been deep in thought the whole time, I couldn’t remember most of the places my mind had explored!

Obsession with capturing every little thing seems to be a bit of a problem area for me. I wrote a week ago about how the need to record every little thought I had about a given blog post made the journaling habit I was trying to build more anxiety inducing and less useful. I had the same concern while listening to a news podcast during a car trip – there was no way I was going to remember everything the hosts were taking about before I got home and was able to write it all down!

This worry about permanently losing an interesting thought is taking some of the pleasure out of thinking. I could solve that, at least on the daily walks I’m planning to take, by bringing a journal with me, or maybe talking into a voice recorder as I ponder. But let’s be honest: I rarely go back through my old journals and notes anyways. Even if I record my ideas, they’re still just as likely to be lost.

A better solution, I think, is to work on embracing the temporary nature of thought. Even if I do lose a good idea, I’ve got a million other good ideas to take its place. If I need to re-derive any conclusions, the fact that I came to them the first time means I should be able to re-derive them again when relevant. And frankly, a lot of it should be re-derived when it becomes more relevant. My current opinions on how I will handle social media use and discipline with my hypothetical future child will almost certainly be out of date by the time it’s relevant, given the fact that said child does not yet exist.

Besides, if I keep taking these walks, probably some of the same ideas will come up in my head over and over again. Eventually they will either stick around long enough to be captured in a journal entry, or maybe make it permanently into my mental model of the world (even if I don’t remember the exact specifics of how I got there).

So that’s my goal for the next month or so: learn to be content with the fact that I might forget a lot of things that I read, listen to, or think about. Some things may stick around long enough to make it into a journal entry, but I want to be comfortable with the idea of letting the rest go.