We Think, Therefore We Create
We struggle to create anything worthwhile on our own because we are not pausing enough in our lives. Our days are entirely occupied with one thing or another. We are hooked to our phones. If not that, we are hooked to our desks. If not that, then we are hooked to someone.
Our brains are constantly consuming something. We barely pause to take a breath, to process everything we have absorbed so far. There is no synthesis happening in the mind, no connecting of the dots. Over time, this turns us into reactive personalities.
And then one day we realise we know nothing. We can build nothing. We know nothing that truly matters. We lack any skill that others might benefit from. We cannot even construct a beautiful sentence, let alone articulate our thoughts clearly.
Building something requires the synthesis of past knowledge. First, one has to acquire knowledge. Then one has to sit with it. Let it settle. Process it internally. Connect it with earlier understanding. From this emerges a personal thesis, not a forced opinion for the sake of novelty, but a natural outcome of sustained thinking.
This kind of thinking cannot happen at the mercy of a clock. Schedules do not work here. You need to carve out time in your day where your mind is allowed to wander freely. Anywhere it wants. Connect to anything it wants.
It may begin with the thought of a beautiful woman, then drift to another beautiful woman seen in a World War II film, and then slide into the history of the fall of the Ottoman Empire. From there it may ask whether the Bolshevik Revolution, had it not happened, would have altered the course of the Second World War.
There is not enough wandering happening at this depth. We need to walk. We need to talk to ourselves about the ideas forming in our heads. I do this often, walking or sitting still, doing nothing except narrating an idea to myself as though I am explaining it. I ramble internally, not in a disordered way, but in the way a thinker does.
This not only forces the mind to think deeply about a subject, it also forces it to stay with a single thread. And if it wanders elsewhere, let it. Instead, we drown our minds with noise cancelling headphones, blasting music we are not even enjoying. Most of the time, the songs we think connect with us do not.
We need to eliminate activities from our days so the brain can do what it does best, make sense of the world. To help us rationalise our reality. To feel less and understand more. That is the source of all creation.
If you have not thought about anything, how do you expect to have thoughts about anything? Do not drown the mind. Let it wander freely, or indulge in the rambling. You may discover that there are holes in what you believe to be true.
When we go deeper into a single idea, we are forced to confront every perspective surrounding it. This strengthens our arguments and exposes their flaws. That is what fuels the transformation from a consumer into a creator.
And in order to create something, you have to become something. Thinking is becoming. As René Descartes put it, we think, therefore we are.