MindOpenWhy

I take in too many inputs and give myself no time for reflection and creative outlets of my thoughts.

I am beginning to feel as if my mind is overwhelmed with all of this.

It is more difficult to form clear, coherent expressions of what I am thinking.

I tend to ramble and jump from one idea to another.

One sentence or paragraph is just a reaction to something I wrote in the previous one.

It is like my thought process is beginning to function like a comment string.

So I need to take a mental vacation from all the inputs, news articles, social networking feeds and other sources of mental inputs.

I need time to process and digest and sort through all the clutter that has been accumulating in my mind.

I almost find myself in a trap where the only things that come to mind for me to write about are a reaction to something else I’ve read.

Current events, debates, controversies, conversations, articles.

Instead I want thoughtful reflective expression to dominate what I write and publish.

No one will probably care to read it because everyone just wants fast food information.

If it supports their predefined views of things, all the better.

What is forbidden is long, wordy expressions of thought.

The world doesn’t have time for this.

We need McInformation.  

140 characters or less preferred.

Can the important things be expressed in 140 characters or less?

Can carefully distilled and refined thought be summarized in this way and still be meaningful and relevant and edgy enough to catch anyone’s attention?

Am I a failure as a human being if I fail to remain relevant to a world that has such a short attention span?

What truly important universal human truths have been Tweeted lately?

Has anything grasped the attention of our collective good will and spurned us to compassionate action?

Have we witnessed any sustained initiative on the part of humankind to collectively solve any single global issue?

Has shallow thought become the norm or has it just always been this way?

Are we more content to distract ourselves with that which is entertaining rather than face the hard realities of the injustices of this world and our own complacency in failing to act?

One thing that I think is important is to not avoid the controversial but to thread between the polarities between which the controversy is defined.

This doesn’t mean to make mushy concessions.

It means to acknowledge the hard truth that these polarities exist and that they will be a persistent part of society.

It means to abandon the warm, fuzzy notion that everybody will someday agree.

It means also to abandon the cold, callous notion that eventually those who disagree will need to be silenced, if they can’t be convinced to see things “the right way”.

I’ve become a man who is overcome with worry for what the future holds for my children.

Is it because I’ve given in to the paranoid hysteria and doom and gloom?

Or is it because I can see the writing on the wall?

I have to return to embracing the polarities of optimism for the future and the gloomy view that history can only repeat itself and that war and famine and despair will only spread like wildfire.

I must embrace the view that while there is nothing I can do to stop that which I can not control, if I fail to act to prevent it I too am culpable.

Take poverty, for example.

I recognize that unless many take action, poverty can not be eradicated.

Yet if I fail to take action, I am culpable for the fact that poverty persists even though I individually can not possible end poverty.

One response to this is to simply say “I am not responsible for poverty”.

“The existence of poverty, and even of any single instance of poverty is not my fault.  I did not cause it and therefore am not responsible for it and have no obligation or duty to attempt to alleviate it.  There are people more able than I who could help end it, and they do nothing so why should I feel compelled.  Poverty is mostly the fault of the poor who are too lazy to take charge for their own situation and make it better.  And charities can’t be trusted so I would be wasting my time, energy and money worrying about it.”

Elements containing truth all stitched together to create own big patchwork doll of a lie.