Dynamics of Mind

Like a car we need to drive our mind. As we can not drive a car on the road haphhazardly without the risk of accidents, so is the case with our mind. The level of freedom we get in our thinking world puts us under enormous possibility to think otherwise. We take it almost granted that it's ok to think whatever we want to - that in thinking there could be no real danger. In the land of imagination, we can wander about aimlessly without the fear of any harm. The only difference we appreciate is: if we think smartly, we might be able to achieve more. This is true. But it's only part of the whole picture.

The important fact that we miss here is, we think we can change the direction and context of our thinking in zero time. It seems to us that we can think of anything at anytime without any major effort. This could not be further from the truth. The notion of freedom in our choice of matter of thinking is illusionary. Like a car we can not suddenly change the direction or the speed without losing the momentum or getting into an accident. Surely, there can not be an one to one mapping between a car running on the road and a mind wondering in thoughts. This means, it is probably true that we have more flexiblity in our minds, to change the subject and the rate it changes at, than a present day car. But that difference is certainly not infinite. In fact, it's quite smaller than we can apprehend at first. The flexbility and speed of our thinking mind can change very rapidly in short term, but it's very hard to do the same in long term. Mind does have it's own momentum and like the momentum of a physical body, it also resists changes. Change in mind too, thus requires proportionate application of force, no less than a car or a physical body does. The difference is only in our inability to see it, not in actuality.

Driving a mind is more challenging and engaging than driving a car by many orders of magnitude. We do not drive cars constantly. But we do think at all time. We know when to refuel our car and how to do it, but little is known to us, how we can keep our mind strong for the task it has to complete. Physical food can not be a complete replenishment for the decay of our mind. We need something intellectually revitalizing and refreshing. We seldom appreciate that.

All these facts only indicate a higher chance of mishaps in our mind. And ironically enough, we know very little about how to recover from a 'mind crash' as well. Our knowledge about the dynamics of our mind are as poor as our readiness to address the recovery of probable failure. Mind is our greatest asset as human beings. Yet, we perhaps couldn't care less about it. We need to change. Surely.