Why I Needed to Think Deep

I think a lot. At least I think I do. I’ll take a walk and dive deep into my thoughts about connection and being a human being and life in our universe. I’ll think about love. And how my brain operates. And sometimes political things. And a million other things.

But it’s always just a thought. It exists, then it doesn’t.

It’s like eating a messy burger, and when you’re done the only proof you had that you ate it is the stain on your shirt. Just a little messy reminder, but no real substance. You forget the exact taste of the burger just like you forget the exact taste of your thought.

I stain a lot of my shirts so that analogy hella works for me.

But thinking about things in this way, even though I do think deep, nothing is concrete. I’m being casually curious about a topic, mull it over, then let those thoughts drift away. More on why I think I do this later in this post.

I realized as I was doing things like constantly doomscrolling Facebook, I would come across a piece of content and land somewhere on the spectrum of disagree to agree.

This next part is pretty important!

I realized my opinions were mostly just agreeing or disagreeing with the opinions of others!

I wonder if a lot of people do this to some extent. Maybe they have their thoughts, but they’re built around agreeing or disagreeing with content their algorithm feeds them. They form their opinions to match the outcome. They take their little piece of clay that is their thoughts and shape it to look just like the picture they saw online. Same colors. Same little details. No clue why those specific colors and those specific details, but they are damn proud that they match the original.

I do have opinions on my own. But casual deep thinking is different than intentional deep thinking. When I’m taking a walk and thinking about things, I don’t really have to commit to any thoughts as my truth.

And I think a huge part of that behavior for me is if I don’t have an opinion of my own then I can’t be wrong.

With the way my brain works, it thinks “How can I form an actual opinion of my own when I don’t have every piece of information in existence to form the correct opinion!”

I know that’s not how it works. But that’s how my brain works.

I see a lot of folks share their thoughts online and I’ll think, “those are some silly-ass thoughts.” And I’ll admire them for being dedicated to those thoughts.

I don’t want to be the one that shares some wise opinion and somebody thinks, “those are some silly-ass thoughts.”

And I can usually understand on some level the opinions of various sides of a situation, so I can agree at least in part with conflicting thoughts, which makes it feel impossible to form the correct opinion.

Again, I know that’s not how that works.

So here I am, using this space to think about everything. To be curious about my own beliefs. To take that ball of clay that is my beliefs and play with it, and shape it, and reshape it, until it looks like a belief that I made all by myself.