On a daily basis we have millions of thoughts that run through our brains-- some important, and some not. We live in a world full of busy schedules and high stress situations, and so often life can feel impossible to handle. Although I believe that a lot of what David Foster Wallace said in his speech is extreme, I agree with with his idea that we are all lost in our own heads. "As I am sure you know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your head." There is something about this constant monologue that makes me question the human brain. Why do we always have to have ideas in our heads? It’s not like all of our thoughts are self-involved, but all of our thoughts have meaning to us. It’s something about the individual life experience that makes our thoughts, and reactions to those thoughts different. There are millions of factors that define our life experience, from our personality, our likes and dislikes, our goals, our appearance, where we live, and ultimately the attitude we have towards everyday life. Some of these factors are controlled by the way we listen to the thoughts in our heads. Although at the end of the day, every decision we make originates from that monologue. As much as we may sometimes despise our thoughts, we also have an equal amount of reasons to thank those thoughts. It is our brains that make the good decisions along with the bad. I personally have many days where I just wish my brain had an off button, but at the end of the day I have to realize that if my brain were to turn off, then I could not function at all. So how can we despise the very thing that makes us who we are? Maybe deciphering our own brains is the real way to be happy. I don't mean analyzing every individual thought until we drive ourselves crazy; I mean listening to our brain the same way we listen to everything else in our lives. Our brains tell us everything about ourselves, and I believe that if we listen to that, we will learn what will make us happy in our everyday lives. Once we learn to live the life that we love, the love can spread. So before we blame our brain for the pain in our lives, maybe we should really listen to what it has to say.
Lesson #3: The way we listen to our thoughts affects how we live our life.
This piece was so interesting to read and brought so many questions into my mind regarding human thoughts. I never really thought about how complicated our thought process was and I enjoyed hearing your beliefs about the brain. Also, I love how you wrote about something extremely interesting that deals with what we talked about in class.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your piece so much! I think its very interesting how you incorporate a little bit of psychology into this. I agree with you when you mention the off button of our brains. It was very creative and well thought out.
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