The Conundrum of the Mind

What a hectic week it has been for me. Only now am I able to settle down for my weekly blogging session. My five-year-old Dell laptop refused to boot up on Monday night. So I had to spend the next 2 days evaluating various options. Finally, I decided to repair it and purchase a new one at the same time---because it'll take 2 weeks for the parts to arrive, and I cannot disrupt my immediate work schedule.

Here I am typing this blog post from my brand new HP laptop. Took me a whole day to set up my favourite Linux OS and all the tools required for me to do my development work. I think I should be all systems go again from tonight.

But let's get this post out of the way first, because blogging is both a break and a preparation for work. As a break from work, it allows me to use a different part of my brain after a whole day of churning out computer code. And as preparation, it allows me to gather together my thoughts, evaluate priorities before attacking the next portion of my work.

Reading and writing lubricates the mind. After a whole day of grinding out code, the mind needs recuperation. Therefore, I choose to write on subjects that are not directly related to my work. That way, a part of the brain gets to rejuvenate itself while another does the heavy lifting on a totally unrelated matter. By exercising different parts of the brain, you build up your overall mental fitness.

The mind is such a great tool when it comes to tackling problems with the external world. But when it comes to our internal world, it often IS the source of our problems. You can blame that on all the unnecessary worrying and incessant self-criticism that reverberates in one's head. Our everyday mind is rarely at peace: it feels insecure and seeks reassurances; it amplifies the improbable. It simply has no sense of proportion. The human mind is poor in handling the unpredictability of everyday affairs.

The first step towards taming this unruly mind of ours is to realize its nature. Once you know that it is the mind that is the biggest culprit in torturing itself, you gain a better sense of proportion. Everything is alright--at least in that instance when you have that particular worrying thought. You are alive and thinking thoughts. You are still in possession of your body and mental faculties. You just have to allow the mind to find its resting point. Just step back a little and observe.

Observe your thoughts without judgement--for every judgement is another thought, which spawns off further judgments of their own. If we know how to observe our thoughts without reacting, we possess the key to this eternal conundrum that is our mind. And that is the whole practice of mindfulness, which shall be the subject of future blogs.