Writing Challenge Day 12: Keeping an Active Mind

The December Writing Challenge is coordinated by Leon, and he constructs the schema for the entire month. He provides the Thought Seeds for all essays. They are meant to carry the theme through the month, and each of us authors, or writers (if I dare use that word), gets to choose the seed we wish to plant. It’s my hope that it’s stimulating and sprouts into thought-provoking conversations. The Thought Seed I chose this year was Keeping an Active Mind.

What does Keeping an Active Mind mean? I think it depends on what the two words active and mind mean to you. At a basic level, if MIND = BRAIN, then technically, it only stops being active when we have shuffled off this mortal coil. The brain controls the Central, Somatic, and Autonomic nervous systems. Then there’s the Enteric nervous system, but only if you trust your gut! Hence, there isn’t much you consciously need do for your mind/brain to keep minimally active.

However, if you detach the mind from the physical elements, you can enter the realms of philosophy—examining the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence. Or, you may enter the realms of ideologies to examine ways of being in this world, as individuals and as groups. This exploration has been going on for thousands of years, and hopefully, will continue for many more. Well, what does it mean for us currently? I have no answers, just observations and questions.

The Buddhist monk Shunryu Suzuki Roshi wrote in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.” My basic understanding of his premise is when one starts a practice or study, there are seemly infinite paths laid out before you. Your inexperience means there are no limits, because you don’t know the boundaries yet. Each step along the way is excitingly new, because your mind is actively taking in all that is around you. You are an amateur.

Permit me a slight diversion here. The word “amateur” has its roots in the Latin amare—to love. When you think about being an amateur, in most new endeavors, you are exploring it for the love of the thing. You might even bring a passion or excitement to it, as one does with a new love!

In Roshi’s perspective: Once you become an expert, a person of comprehensive and authoritative knowledge, it becomes easy to think you know everything. One can think there is little to nothing more to know about a practice. The trap is: what you know restricts the possibilities! Your mind can become lazy or inactive. Conversely, even an expert can keep an active, passionate mind to see the wider possibilities. Experts’ knowledge need not constrain future dreams and ideas if they keep an active mind and maintain their passion.

Living through our pandemic is an awakening opportunity for humanity! It’s unique in scope and scale, as it appears to be hitting everywhere and everyone at once—a dreadful consequence of our highly mobile world, for both people and goods? Humans are forced to examine what’s important in their lives; what and who they may have taken for granted. The pandemic is exposing the flaws in our systems, and institutions, that so many depend upon. Many have reached points in their lives where they think they’re experts at living. Heck, they’ve made it thus far and are doing fine! The American psyche tricks us into believing this success is solely due to our own efforts. What we know has gotten us this far, it must be the past that is worth maintaining. Let us all return to a safe “normal”—something known. So maybe something safe? Not the future dreams to be made reality. That is the question.

The opportunity of our pandemic is that it is so disruptive, we’re all forced to change in many ways. Even those who don’t want to believe this is real must go out into a world that mostly does believe this is real. The unbelievers must be bolder and more visible in their defiance. Even unbelievers’ behavior has changed, and how they’re perceived by their community is changing as well. My point here is this is a turning point! Change is happening, and if we keep an active mind about the opportunities presented by our pandemic: Who knows how human societies might improve and change given this opportunity?

What does it mean to keep an active mind?
Watching the movies and TV shows,
Who killed J.R.? Nobody knows.
When you’re stuck in quarantine,
Did I forget to wash those tangerines?
I memorized a new vocabulary list,
To understand the epidemiologists!
What does it mean to keep an active mind?
With your thoughts all running around,
When your whole body just wants to lie down.
Yet in this time of SARS-Cov-2,
We are all having to learn something new.
So, reading the Lancet and watching the W.H.O.
To find out the things we’re supposed to do.
Wash your hands, wear a mask, and stay home if you’re sick.
Be patient and kind, but especially don’t be a _______!
When the food banks are empty from high demand,
And a tsunami of evictions looms over the land,
Yet records are set on the stock exchanges,
Perhaps we should consider some societal changes?
What does it mean to keep an active mind?
When the thoughts in your head keep swirling around,
But your whole body just wants to lie down.
-              Lie Down? by Tom Iannelli

“The trick of the future is that it’s empty,
A cup before you pour the water. The future
Is a waiting cup, and for all it knows, you’ll fill it
with milk instead. You’re thirsty.”
—from the poem Future by Maggie Smith