If I have my way about it I would make every day a why day! And by the way, drinking coffee does not need an explanation, and I love cereal as a midnight snack!

Maybe we all need a 'why' day. Where we ask why we do everything we do.

Why do I need to wash myself? Why brush my teeth? Why only eat cereal or toast for breakfast? Why drink coffee? Why use a car to drive to work etc…

Sounds interesting.

How can I know what I think till I read what I write?

Writing does three things for me.

1 It helps me organise my thoughts

When I think, I usually have two or three thought-threads running through my mind. Sometimes more. Sometimes they get mixed together, not so that I’m confused necessarily, for I can cope with that. It is more of a prioritisation, for I find it difficult to prioritise competing thoughts that are nevertheless parallel on a topic. The threads become less tangled when I write and edit what I write.

2 Prioritising my thoughts sparks further thought

By prioritising my thoughts in a visual way I engage other ideas and thoughts that are in the background – some are as if they were in the subconscious, others vague and indistinct come into sharper focus.

There are many parts of the brain that lie unused or that are used almost exclusively for specialist jobs, such as the visual cortex to do with sight and parts to do with processing hearing. Studies have shown that blind people use the visual cortex despite not being able to see. It is possible that sighted people can use this ‘visionary’ and sophisticated part of the brain for other purposes than processing visual responses from the retina. Perhaps the visual cortex is, in part, invoked when a person sees their thoughts in a written, visual form. Who knows? But when my background thought threads are written down they can be listed alongside more conscious thought threads.

3 Writing puts to rest serendipitous thought threads

There is an old saying “sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits”. I find it difficult to do the latter for thought processes take over when I try to just sit. Some of these go on in the background of my mind all the time. The psychologists tell us that this is normal.

When I become conscious of these threads, I try to make sense of them. Writing helps me do this for it does 1 and 2 above. When these are processed through exhaustive cycles of writing and editing, it is as if the thoughts are put to rest. I can sleep on them. The famous and ancient poet John Donne said “he tames it, that fetters it in verse”. I believe that the sentiment behind this line is what this point is all about.

Ka kite
from Middle-earth