Mind in the Unmaking
I don’t know why philosophers are always so concerned with my mind. It’s getting so that I can’t pick up a book without being told how to think. One of the most silly and dangerous suggestions was offered to me by James Harvey Robinson in his article Four Ways of Thinking. Mr. Robinson asserts that we don’t think enough about how we think. He says that most of our confusion is due to this neglect on our part. I was open to Mr. Robinson’s suggestion, in spite of the fact that previously my thoughts had been progressing in fairly good order without my giving too much thought to them.
Perhaps Mr. Robinson should have hinted that the hours immediately before retiring had best not be spent in thinking about how you think. I had the bad fortune to try the experiment in the peace and quiet so generally found at three in the morning. The first A.M. I hoped to sneak up and surprise my thoughts which had reigned for so long in unquestioned and unobserved fancy. I waited in impatient anxiety. A few stupid thoughts made their debut, danced crazily about, squirmed furiously, and at length intimated before expiring that they refused to have anything to do with ‘Peeping Toms’. I even tried playing possum, but all I received in the way of enlightenment from those feeble-brained kids of mine was a not so weak thumbing of their noses. After a few unhappy hours, I learned to think in circles and I doubt that was what Mr. Robinson wanted me to do. I started from and wound up at no place in my thoughts. The only thing that actually happened in my head was a headache, so I was forced at the first trial to give up the Robinson task of thinking as something designed for hardier brains than mine.
My thinking on thinking received another stab in the dark the next morning at three. It I had been a Yogi couldn’t have gotten better results — my mind became a total blank. So I went to sleep!
On the third trial I was determined not to give in to defeat until I had come to some sort of conclusion on the now serious question of how I do thnk. I hoped to ease my quest by surrounding myself with a few bottles of cold beer, hordes of cigarettes, and a satisfying lamp. Aided by me external comforts I went into a trance. I might still be in it if I hadn’t been actually and finally blessed with the thought that I was seeing smoke. A second look convinced me that it was smoke and that it wasn’t coming from the direction of my brain; it was issuing from a more vital spot. Action — quick action — without the aid of thinking, discovered that I was sitting on a fire. Mr. Robinson was abruptly forgotten, and my thinking returned to normal when I saw that a hole as large as my fist had been bored through the pillow on which I was reposing. The cigarette I thought I had placed in the ashtray was lying dejectedly and worn-out on a nest not built by thinking. The excuse I had to give later about how I had been very busy thinking about how I was thinking didn’t work. I received the warning that I had better do less thinking and more remembering. Taking this advice to heart I remember now that you can’t think while you’re thinking about how you’re thinking in spite of all the bright announcements made by Mr. Robinson. It has been said by better peole than I that it is impossible to be doing two things at the same time. And my mind is no miracle worker. If, in spite of all my hardships anyone still wants to know how I think, I simply state that I think the same way I used to think before Mr. Robinson came along. And that was peacefully. And that’s how I’m going to go on thinking — let the philosophers boss each other around.
Peggy Stebbins, March 26, 1941