Food of the Mind
I'm enjoying some Al-Kbous tea today together with a nice poke bowl lunch, which I had ordered from Grab. Maybe this will be my dinner too, I don't know. I might go for some beers later. Let's see how it goes.
If I go to a restaurant or cafe, it is mainly to read. Food and drinks are mere accompaniments to this my main activity. And because of this, I am often oblivious to the taste and quality of the food that I'm consuming. I am often surprised when others have very strong opinion about the culinary merits of each place. As I've written in a previous article, I try not to be judgemental about food. This makes it easy for me to adapt my diet to any place that I find myself in.
Last week I wrote about the "food of love"; maybe today I'll write about the food we feed our minds. In the age of social media, we tend to stuff ourselves with content which gives us that rush of dopamine. The endless scrolling on the smartphone, consuming Tik Tok or YouTube videos is not unlike our habit of munching junk food. Both are addictive, and have questionable nutritional value to the mind and body.
Unlike the food I eat, I try to be more choosy and discerning about the content that I consume. When it comes to feeding the mind, I am a health freak. My favourite activity of the day these days is my morning walk in the park where I clock-in my required number of daily steps while listening to quality podcasts or audiobooks. My choice of audio content is deliberate--usually it is a mixture of current affairs, philosophy, science and spirituality.
Even during office hours, whenever I'm performing some mechanical tasks that do not require thinking or talking to people, I would be listening to some audio content. My perfect work day is one where all I do are repetitive, even boring tasks that do not require much thinking. This frees my mind for consuming more useful content via audio.
When the mind is doing work that requires thinking, like writing this blog, then music becomes an accompaniment, to inspire, enhance, induce and flavour my output. The best music is the sound of nature--the rush wind in the trees, the patter of rain on the rooftop, or the chirping birds at dawn. Reading outdoors, something which I did a lot as a kid, is such a great joy.
The good life to me is simply this--being able to afford good food for the mind and having the time to enjoy them. We are lucky that most of the things we consume online these days are almost free. Even a monthly subscription to Spotify is only around RM20.00 (the price of a meal, which often can be skipped), considering that fact that it me access to the entire corpus of classical music available in the world. I can't believe my ears! Well, if audio content be the food of the mind, play on!
