7 Takes to Thinking Deeply

Last updated on: November 10, 2017 at 8:56 am by Anne Kennedy

7 Takes to Thinking Deeply 2017-11-10T08:56:01-04:00 Anne Kennedy

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It’s Friday! That means Takes!
One
The sky is full of clouds and rumors of snow. This appalls, saddens, and alarms me, of course, especially since I discovered most of the snow suits perishing in varying degrees of mold and decay sometime back in August when I was cleaning the whole house (boy was that moment a kaleidoscope of futility in all its incandescent facets). When I discovered the horror I took them all and shoved them into the garage meaning every day from thence to now to just quickly ‘cope’ with them. That’s a technical word for standing around indecisively. But I guess now I actually will do something with them. Or rather, probably tomorrow. Today I’m busy.

Two
Busy going back to Sayre to the Guthrie Clinic with my parents. Some fancy endocrinology tests have been promised that will go deeper than the surface, “all your hormone levels are normal, so there is therefore nothing at all wrong with you” testing that has been the norm until now. I am pretty excited about it.

On Wednesday we met with the most lovely doctor you can imagine–someone who cleared a whole hour and a half of his schedule. I mean, that part was so amazing to me. I have never spent a whole hour and a half with any doctor since coming to America, at least not when they were in the capacity of acting as a doctor. It’s possible I’ve been in the same room as a doctor for that long, like maybe in church or something, but never when I was sick.

But the part that I liked best was that he was thinking the whole time.

Three
I have been working my way slowly through that Deep Work book, and I’ve been going around evaluating both my own habits of mind, and those of everybody else I happen upon. And the thing that I’ve noticed about myself is that I don’t push myself to think hard about anything for more than maybe five minutes. I do love to think about things, but it’s more a prancing across the surface of a subject, flitting and sipping and then moving on to the next thing. I haven’t trained myself to deeply consider anything for very long.

And, not to be a jerk, but I haven’t observed deep thinking in very many other realms of this cultural landscape. Most of the stuff I read on the internet, for example, is about as deep as what I churn out here. Of course, people who are thinking deeply aren’t doing it in front of me. I’m the last person they would want to see heaving over the horizon, ruining their silence.

But this Doctor sat in his chair and adopted a posture of deep concentration, so that every question he asked, and every answer we gave was mulled over, was considered before the next question came. And then when he examined my dad it was like, I mean, it was so extraordinary, it was like he was listening to the body, was intensely considering it. I tell you, I’ve never seen anything like it.

Four
I mean, I love my usual doctors. And they know me. But they only get twenty minutes with me ever. That certainly builds up over the years. They have some sense of what I normally look like and how I am. So when I got sick in January they were alarmed and ran around and helped me to the uttermost. But they were frenetic, and I was frantic. By the grace of God they quickly landed on whatever was wrong and took steps to fix it.

And that’s where we are as a society. Constantly rushing to the next thing. Very rarely stopping to look carefully, to listen, to try to see what’s not immediately visible the moment you flutter your eyes open in the morning.

Five
Of course, every time I plug in my headphones to listen to anything, but especially the Deep Work book, I am interrupted. I wish I were exaggerating but truly, it’s uncanny. Yesterday I thought I had a moment of peace and so I crept into my room and pushed play, and tried to silently busy myself Kon Mari-ing my sock drawer, because, you know, the souls of my socks are not free to rest right now, and that’s a terrible thing, and I kid you not, every thirty seconds a different child came in to impart non essential information.
“I think I’m going to make some hot chocolate,” said one.
“I can’t find my book,” said another.
“I just wanted to see what you were doing,” said a third.
Each time I pushed pause, dispatched the child, and then tried to recall where I was in the book. And each time I couldn’t. I had to go back and recover from my original spot. This also is what it’s like to sit down with a book. Impossible.

Which is why I give up and click through buzz feed and bored panda. Because I can look at pictures of people falling off of ledges and tripping over rakes and talk to any number of children at the same time. This is what it’s come to.

Six
Here is a picture of a cat deeply concentrating on ham, angry and disappointed about everything.

Seven
Go check out more Takes! Kelly has a busy weekend ahead of her but lots of fascinating people are linking up! And now I’m going to go stare at those snow suits, but then I’m just gonna walk away. Pip pip.

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