Ethan Webb
my philosophical thoughts
~ ADHD ~
Creativity is a sudden thing for me. It appears out of thin air. My thoughts come like fickle gusts. My mind is like a sailboat. If I do not catch the creativity in my sails and pike out until I tack – to get myself out of the lull of a writers block – my boat jibes and floats, until I row, or get towed. Either I ride a tangent, making my sails gasp and my hull reverberate as the bow mounts whitecaps and risk being capsized, or scull a stagnant current more still than a half-empty glass and watch my sails pitifully suffocate. If I choose to go with the latter I usually don’t have any paddle to row with and so I have a verbal row with the wind whilst I drift out to sea. Alas!
Nigh, on my starboard, are words that romanticize wind. If I don’t catch this gust I’ll get depressed watching the luff of my sail, talking to myself, stuck in a lull where no wind blows. You are free to disembark into the bathwater if you prefer being tacky to tacking. I, for one, am coming about. Ahoy! Answers are blowing in the wind.
The wind is to the heart as the weather is to life. When the weather is cold and
bitter the wind makes everything worse. Wind stings and makes you colder. You want it to stop the breeze from creeping under your skin. You run, or cover yourself with a blanket, or eat comfort food just so you feel something. When life is cold your heart chills you till you’re numb. On the contrary, when the weather is warm and sunny, a gust of wind is a welcome release. You can smell the flowers as their scent is carried through the air, catch relief from the heat, or listen to it rustle the trees with a sound that makes canopies sing like conch shells. When life is good your heart can bring bliss.
Now that I have caught that breeze my boats tack has changed. It’s better if I spare you this next breeze. You wouldn’t like the course that ol’ Pressure-Gradient-Force has charted.
Adulthood is a zoo
Picasso once said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”
I’ve always wondered if it’s society beating us down or a process of maturity that sucks out all that creative energy we have before we’re four feet tall. I’ve realized it’s a mix of both.
When we’re a kid, there’s no shame in having an active imagination. It’s not “weird” if you think out loud or act out some character or plot you’ve been entertaining in your head.
But when you’re older, you have lines to stay inside of. Unless you’re an actor, writer, etc., then toeing the line between fantasy and reality is more likely to be called OCD, ruminating, or mental illness rather than a beautiful working of your mind that exemplifies talent and potential.
Imagination becomes a series of demonized processes of thought. I understand why, for so many adults, it’s hard to feel like you’re having fun. When you’re taught to be taut, there’s no room for color—it’s a black-and-white world.
It’s like society wants to sedate your mind from being a wild animal, running zig-zags on the Savannah, so you can become a creature prowling the zoo. Dress nice, act behaved, exhibit “normal” behavior, be productive, and apply your critical thinking skills.
You can’t be artistic without performing “eccentric” behavior, and the point of maturity is conformity, which is the opposite of eccentric. Twisted cycle.
People forget that, no matter our opposable thumbs and intelligence, we’re still animals.
I’m grateful for the hippies who made a counter-culture movement during a time when eccentricity was even more demonized. Doesn’t change the fact that we still have an education system full of classes that seem to be more focused on winning a space race than valuing creativity...
“All these psychics and these doctors,
They're all right and they're all wrong,
It's like trying to make out every word,
When they should simply hum along,
It's not some message written in the dark,
Or some truth that no one's seen,
It's a little bit of everything.” — Dawes
non-Narrative transportation
The sky moves. Cassiopeia moves from above us to Greece overnight—faster than a human could get there. It essentially teleports. But to the naked human eye, we cannot witness it moving toward Greece. It simply stays still like an illusion as the Earth spins madly on.
Fallacies
"The writer's job is to tell the truth," Ernest Hemingway once said. When he was having difficulty writing he reminded himself of this, as he explained in his memoir, A Moveable Feast. "I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.’”
_____________
Society is just a blanket that’s too warm on a hot night.
emotions in motion
Happiness, like any emotion, is fleeting.
In the end, we’re chasing fleeting moments—and the best of those moments can stir a range of emotions in us. When we feel more emotions, we feel more alive; when we feel more alive, we can remember those moments better than others.
I guess kind, considerate, and compassionate people try to catch those fleeting moments without costing the happiness of others. To too many, unfortunately, such qualities thus prove to be hindrances in their rat race. But as Morrissey said, “It’s so easy to laugh, it’s so easy to hate. It takes guts to be gentle and kind.”
“Fuel for Thought”
Everyone dreams in their sleep. Some people dream lucidly. Some have nightmares. Many, like me, suck at remembering dreams.
But, in our dreams, we all tell a fictional story. By nature, humans are storytellers who craft narratives, formulate fantasy, and so on.
Sometimes, my “innate” storytelling skillset will spill over and manifest in negative ways. My mind wonders, wanders, and gets lost in its maze.
This can be a good thing, though. I once saw a funny meme: “Anxiety is just creating conspiracy theories about yourself.” Think of how often we tell ourselves stories without even trying to—from anxious uncertainties about the mundane to wackier trains of thought that make us feel out-of-touch with reality. Maybe it’s better to respect those fearful thought patterns and turn them into stories in lieu of worries.
There’s a solution, and it lies within us. As Bob Marley said, “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds.”
Last winter, I was reading a book, “The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure.” I definitely recommend it, but I also want to share an interesting concept from it that revolves around Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
CBT is like taking your unwanted thoughts or feelings and training yourself to receive them differently and sometimes make a positive spin on them. The authors compare it to an “Elephant & Rider.” The elephant wants to go whatever way it’s naturally inclined to; the rider redirects the elephant and reins it in at every “wrong” turn. The elephant is your brain and you’re the rider. Your mind will take you where it wants to go with whatever thoughts it sends your way. Thoughts aren’t preventable, and ignoring them won’t make them go away. But you can correct the direction of each train of thought and handle how you react to ideas that pop into your headspace.
When it comes to writing, inspiration is always ready to strike—even if that inspiration seems like anything but creative energy. You can spin the wonderings and wanderings that riddle the whirled workings of your mind and turn them into works of fiction.
“Keep It Simple, Stupid.”
The K.I.S.S acronym: a clever play-on-words to imply only “smart” people overthink but overthinking is “dumb.” People purport its concept in all sorts of ways, but I have mixed feelings about it.
Overthinking is good when it’s paired with facts; this is just intellectual exploration. It’s the process that’ll make us “smarter,” right?
When overthinking lacks the guidance of facts, however, you stray into dangerous waters. Fueling any overthinking with subjective “data” is a well-known recipe for accumulating untethered logic and driving yourself crazy.
When you’re overthinking, your mind is active and eager to connect dots, but connecting the wrong dots will only create an even more puzzling picture. Hastily jumping on what may or may not be true—i.e. misinformation or emotionality—means you’ve devolved from careful intellectual exploration, hiking the summit of knowledge, to bushwhacking your way to a clouded view. Your desire for hitting a goldmine of answers is undoing what should be a slow and steady process of unearthing “artifacts” one piece of hard data at a time.
Like the waves of the ocean, there are so many tidbits of information out there rolling in on a constant basis. Just look to social media, your personal or private conversations, your internal thought patterns, and so on. We can try to figuratively surf each small “wave” just like we can overthink about any piece of information or internal thought and drain our mental energy in the shallow “what-if” waters. Alternatively, we can let any small waves pass by and wait for those big swells we know to be the real deal. The odds of success in this figurative surf session have been increased thanks to a bit of patient behavior and calculated thinking.
Anyway, a few weeks ago, I reflected on some irony surrounding this idea.
Our understanding of what's “good” in mental health is shaped by scientists who substantiate much of their own overthinking with theories, case studies, opinions, and so on. They don’t have clear-cut answers for everybody— definitions are shrouded with gray areas.
Understanding mental health is more of an art than a science where experts can only make educated guesses. “Mental Illness” is a loose term with real connotations, but we lack hard data to identify where lines are to be drawn and, more importantly, how or why they should be drawn in a society with expectations clashing against our inherent state-of-being.
Emotions are infamously illogical and difficult to explain. When scientists try to pinpoint the cause-and-effect relationship between humans and emotions, we’ve thankfully evolved from being in dangerous waters to in murky waters. But if we’re to claim we can understand the complexities of the human mind, less might be more.
Overthinking in the mental health realm could very well be another word for undue Pathologizing (regarding or treating someone or something as abnormal or unhealthy). And, until we stop pathologizing, a toxic culture will always remain where emotionality is encouraged on the surface but comes with the danger of haphazard labeling.
Even more ironic? I’m overthinking about overthinking, and everything I’ve written here is purely speculative. I’m just as twisted up in the irony as the “experts” (and so are you). I guess—subjectively speaking—we’re both being “stupid.”