Inside brain, outside brain...

[bunn]

We'd rather give ourselves electric shocks than be alone with our thoughts, says new study


I was interested by that news story, and thought about it as I mowed the lawn. It seemed odd to me that they ruled out the person who had found a pen and started making a 'to do' list. Surely, that is a person who is not only comfortable alone with their thoughts, but has decided that their thoughts were so useful, they were worried about forgetting them and wanted to record them for their future convenience?

One thing I sometimes like to do in my head is design elaborate rabbit houses. It seems an odd and arbitrary division to say that you are alone with your thoughts while you work out how the doors would be secured and what materials to use for the roof and how to cut a pleasing set of curved windows that could be shuttered in the winter, but to say that as soon as you start to draw the thing on paper, you are somehow operating outside your head. I often write things in my head, but my head has very poor storage facilities so I forget them. Otherwise this blog would have a lot more stuff in it.

I wonder what people who would rather shock themselves with electricity than be alone with their thoughts, think about while mowing the lawn or hoovering? I can't believe anyone thinks about the mowing.

Comments

[ningloreth.livejournal.com]

I live on my own (& have done for 16 years now), and I absolutely hate silence -- if I don't have the radio on, I have to have the TV on; I leave the radio playing upstairs so that when I go up it isn't silent, I leave it playing when I go out so that when I come home the house isn't silent, I leave it playing at night so that when I wake up it's not to silence. If I go to stay with family, I have to take my iPad so that I can listen to the radio when I'm alone in bed. For me, silence is something I can hear, and it's oppressive.

But that's not about being uncomfortable alone with my thoughts, it's about being unhappy alone. If I had a husband, I'm sure I'd love to have the opportunity to spend 15 minutes just thinking my own thoughts!

Do you have any rabbits, btw?

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I've done that with the radio on occasion too, I agree that complete silence can be disturbing.

I've owned rabbits on and off since I was a kid, but when we lost the last one, Ash, I decided that cats and dogs was probably enough animals. But I never quite managed to achieve the perfect rabbit house - easy to clean, warm, spacious, secure with room to graze but also an attractive thing to have in the garden... I had a couple of henhouses which came close, but I still kind of fancy building a castle, or maybe a Bunny Cottage. :-D