Learning to Think

 

Learning to Think

     by D Ougalasreimer

Imagine, if you will, you retired ones who have not had a thought in your lives but do not know that, imagine what the difference would have been between this and that, or such and such, had you not, and then again had you, lived a life in which you learned to think. What would it have been like, how different, if you had lived a thoughtful life? 

     We live one thought, we thinkers. Only one thought constitutes the difference between us and those who are not inclined to think. What does that mean, exactly? It means that, for the thinker, nothing is prohibited, while for the thoughtless one everything is entirely prohibited. Thus, thought is a product of freedom. Thoughtlessness derives from, and likely drives, captivity. What is it to be free? Certainly not Dylan’s idea that birds might not be free of the chains of the skyway. The exact nature of freedom will have to wait. I am not there yet. First, this bumbling here about thinking. And the story of the thoughtless one’s life.

      The thoughtless one felt prohibited. Nothing was allowed. Everything was properly restricted. She could not go into town Saturday night until she was old enough for her parents and aunts not to care if she did and, in fact, for them to encourage her to finally go. “Go girl! You’re going on 22! For goodness sake, woman, when do you think you’ll get yourself a man if not now? Yesterday they wanted you, today….” Well, like that. It’s much like the joke,“You know you’ve been married a long time when you don’t care where your spouse goes, as long as you don’t have to go along.” Also, she (the person above) began to do certain things on her own, alone, when she got to be about 19. Then it was OK. Till then she recalled her mother saying, “Don’t, Veronica! People will see! That is not what ladies do!” Later on, when her mother no longer cared, and when she was older, she did same with the familiar accompanying shame, but then it was all right. Shame, and doing it, were OK, just the way that she and Armand together in bed doing whatever came to them, within reason, felt shame and relief simultaneously most of the time that they engaged and loved. Love was shame and emptying at once, always. 

     Love is just such filling and emptying for the thoughtless. The thinking ones have so long ago looked hard at shame that they defy it eventually, and try the very things that shame tells them not to try and, trying anyway, in despite of shame, to overcome shame, they become free of shame and live shameless lives in new areas, though shame is still there for them to overcome in other areas, and this is why and how they continue to think, instead of thinking only once and then leaving it all behind once and for all. This is the one thought that takes a lifetime. It is overcoming shame, resisting shame, in all the houses of Baghdad, for instance, and everywhere, slowly winning over it, over shame, in this urban warfare. That is thought.

     Nolan was a humble man. All his life he worked for Eatons. He stole almost no merchandise. He gave up his one chance for promotion in order to let another in line ahead of him. He earned a fair wage which let him have a new vehicle every 10 or 11 years. He drank a great deal, to excess, and finally attended alcoholics anonymous with success. He turned amateur golfer in his retirement and had his own golf cart. He made wine and beer at home. He did not start drinking again, however, until he was in his late 70s. By then his brew stash filled ever nook, cranny and shelf in the basement. He died peacefully in his sleep in the car on the way to the next town to spend the afternoon in the pub with friends. 

Nolan had bad breath. That bothered his wife who asked him to think about how much suffering he caused others by continuing to drink milk and eat milk products. He did not listen to her but kept at it. He was not a thinking man. Wisely, once when he drove his pick-up into the ditch near Gretna, Manitoba, Canada, he abandoned it at first, then returned and dumped a 5 gallon container of gasoline on it and ignited it. Years later, he did the same thing to an ageing Chevrolet, which he had learned to dislike with an intensity bordering on ferocity. This time he parked it under a neighbour’s bulk farm gas barrel, opened its nozzle and let the whole tank empty into the car through an open window. Then he threw in a firecracker from behind an elm where he hid. The blast toppled the elm onto him and left him permanently wounded in the thigh. This wound his wife adored, since she could trace the scars with her slim fingers and think about her hero escaped from such danger and calamity. He never explained to Rita how it was that the car had ended up under the bowser, nor how it had caught fire. She never asked. Devoted though she was, she was not a thinker.

     Lillian did not think. She once slept with a man from her hometown after she was married and had four kids. She felt shame. She asked for forgiveness in the church where she told her whole story. She wept, she got angry, she confided it to her husband and others. She told everyone. She was proud of herself and felt the shame as a product of her bad upbringing. She trusted God increasingly. She did not learn to think.

     Evangeline did not learn to think either. She curled weekends. She never got married. She did not know why she found men unattractive. She never practised anorexia but obesity came her way naturally. She made friends with other women who were also heavy. These women in groups of twos and threes accompanied Evan on summer cruise ship cruises on the Caribbean and down the Mediterranean. They had, these girlfriends of 30 and 40, summers off, being teachers. Being elementary school teachers. They did not learn to think.

     Sniggles did learn to think. He nipped his own testicles. He did learn because he kept giving himself reproachful pain. He inflicted on himself pain which he could not talk to others about. They saw, of course. They felt revulsion. There was nothing he could do about it though. He could tell no one. He could not discuss it in forums. No Dear Abbeys would have paid him the slightest attention. No priest or minister would have said, “Ah, my, but you must be sad!” to him. They would all instead have suffered him poorly. Yes, testicle-biting Sniggles was a thinker. He learned to think the one thought that separated him from the rest. He bit, he snipped, he snapped at himself, and in his shameful, visible vulnerability he became a thinker. He thought the one thought thinkers think in their lifetimes. People would say, when they saw him sneak another nip at himself, “Sniggggguuuulss! What are you doing!” They would wag their heads and make him feel so silly and so perverse. He would lower his ears and look in stupid self-knowledge at them and whine a bit his discomfort. Then, the moment they turned the corner, he would be at it again, knowing it was improper, doing it anyway, and enjoying himself in a slanted kind of way as he hurt. 

     Yes, that is the nature of thought. It has long been known to involve just such self-immolation and satisfying pain. Think not, and you find yourself in good company. Think, and you are ruined. Think and you perform shameful perversion on yourself in public which others blink at and pity.

                                                             2007