Taking Time to Think
In the mid-1960s, my professor showed us a drawing his elementary school child had done when the teacher asked pupils to draw what school is like. That was the age when “Think and Do” books complemented “Dick and Jane” readers. The picture showed the teacher in front of the class and in the conversational bubble the teacher said: “Think, do, do, do, do, do, do.”
Six decades later, it’s worth asking if we are any better at balancing thinking and doing. One measure of that balance is how patient we are with people who take the time to think. Cable TV, social media and the fast-paced 24/7 digital news cycle don’t offer incentives for such patience. After President Biden pardoned his son, Hunter, despite promising he would not, liberal analyst Molly Jong-Fast was asked in a live broadcast for a “fast and furious” reaction. “I just heard it. I have to process it. I don’t have a take, I’m sorry.” She was roundly criticized by several other analysts for her decision to slow down and think. Author and President of the National Constitution Center Jeffrey Rosen recounts an interview with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in which she explained how her law clerks had learned to wait out the silence after asking her a question. Her explanation: “Well, I try to think before I speak.”
Our culture seems uncomfortable with waiting and silence. Our technologies irritate us when they take “so long,” such as the delay before a search engine’s response and the loading of a streamed movie. The designers of smartphones understand that the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine is released when we get a reward, so they reward us with new information if we respond to the “ping” announcing a new message. This “trains” us to stop what we’re thinking and pick up the phone. Social media algorithms serve up “click bait” that promises something engaging if we jump to another page, which works against spending time to think about the page we’re on. The dominance of email and texting in so many work and personal lives creates a 24/7 expectation that we stop what we’re doing and respond. The legion of stories, images and “bombshell” reports designed to make us angry or scared hijack our emotions, often reducing our desire or ability to think before we click “like” or “share.”
Being silent is often misunderstood or misjudged in our culture as well. It may be taken as a sign that we are tuned out, not thinking or ignoring a speaker. The speaker often responds with more talk to fill the void. As a budding teacher, I was told to count silently to ten, if needed, after asking a question before moving on. That pause and its silence invite students to think. Our culture seems uncomfortable with silence. Sound is omnipresent, from music in the elevator, doctor’s office, grocery store, shopping mall, restaurants and even fills pauses in sporting events.
Most of us are not terribly bothered by all this, assuming it does not hinder thinking and that we can “do” and “think” at the same time. But neuroscience shows the brain can’t really do two different things well at the same time. While we think we’re multi-tasking, the brain is actually switching quickly between tasks. In that switch we miss information and can easily make mistakes. If you doubt that, try thinking carefully while you’re talking or repeat accurately what someone has just told you when you were engaged in another task.
Mister Rogers was masterful at talking slowly, with pauses – contrary to the rapid pace of children’s TV programming at the time. “The white spaces between words are more important than the text,” he said in a 1994 interview, “because they give you time to think about what you’ve read.” He called silence “graceful receiving” and a way to encourage reflection. He no doubt would have agreed with English philosopher Francis Bacon who said “silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.”
The ability to slow down and appreciate silence is central to the practice of mindfulness, whose benefits include enhanced concentration and thoughtfulness as well as relaxation, lowered blood pressure and reduced stress and anxiety. Even those who do not practice mindfulness or meditation may appreciate the value of sitting in a soft chair in a quiet room to read a book, lying awake in bed for several minutes before beginning a busy day and walking quietly in the woods. As naturalist John Muir put it: “Only by going alone in silence without baggage can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust, hotels and baggage and chatter.”
Eastern artists and poets have long appreciated the power of fostering contemplation by the way they use empty space in their work. As creative thinker Edward de Bono explained:
“There is no hurry –
Like the space in a Chinese painting,
The time in which nothing is happening
Also has its purpose.”
Often, if we are open to it, we find that the time we allow ourselves to stop doing is the gift we have given ourselves of time to think.
Photo Credit: The Digital Artists - pixabay.com
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