Thoughts - trains set in motion*

Your train of thought is the realest real you, thought clad in a shell of bone and meat. What is it doing? Right now?

Too often it idles, or just passively drifts. Sometimes it takes note – it observes. There are times, all too rare for most of us, when your train of thought engages most actively with the universe, placing previously observed phenomena together, creating a synthesis of ideas – your ideas, new, original ideas. 

And we can never really know what's going on in other people's trains of thought. The parameters of my laptop can be agreed upon independently by computer scientists from all four corners of the Earth, but no one can tell what's going on in my mind.

Some people report an internal dialogue going on in their minds; not me. I'm not even sure most of the time what language I think it. But the thought is there, with moments of will determining the direction of the train's travel.

Thoughts don’t so much ripple outward as move in a linear fashion, hence 'trains'. The term itself predates rail travel; it was already in use in the late 16th century. Thomas Hobbes has a chapter entitled ‘Of the Consequence or TRAYNE of Imaginations’ in Leviathan (1651). "By Consequence, or TRAYNE of Thoughts, I understand that succession of one Thought to another, which is called (to distinguish it from Discourse in words), Mentall Discourse."

And when the train of thought is interrupted, it can be difficult to track back, though the thoughts that you have thought along the way, back to that junction where the train went over the points. On my walk today, I found a train of thought interrupted by a splendid view across the fields – then traced my way back to what I had been thinking about up till then, and what initially set off that thought. 

A plane races over the fields behind the back garden in the darkness – wow! 

What was that? Sounded almost like a propeller-driven fighter plane – I open a new window on my laptop to discover it’s a PZL Orlik – a prop trainer used by Polish Air Force, fast and low… Where was I? 

Familiar? Too many distractions. Aha! Yes, while walking across the fields today, I recalled my late friend from Polish Saturday school and Polish scouts, Jack C.; we had a drink in London a few weeks before he died. And I remembered his father telling me many years ago that Jack’s key strength was that he could focus on something – not let his attention drift – for far longer than the average person – a useful characteristic for a lawyer. Very intense, Jack was. But for most of us, trains of thought wanders off onto a new thread – and you forgot what you were trying to get to before being distracted. A good lawyer can concentrate, keep that train on the track.

We think in a linear manner. Our thoughts don't ripple outwards in different directions at the same time. Our story-telling is linear; it's how we explain things as a species. You need to know this piece of information if you are to learn that piece of information later. This is why - correct me if I'm wrong - but neither Stephen Hawking (in A Brief History of Time) nor Carlo Rovelli (in The Order of Time) make the connection between our linear way of thinking and the reason that we see time travelling in one direction ('the arrow of time' as  Hawking puts it). Even if your thinking shifts to the meta-level, it's still a linear shift; the next station for the train of thought, albeit at a higher level. Our thoughts run in one dimension, not two, like ripples over the surface of a pond, or three, like the shockwaves from an explosion.

There's one notable exception to the linear nature of our thinking - the flashback. It could be prompted (by a smell, for example, reminding you of a childhood holiday), or entirely unbidden. These flashbacks, a phenomenon about which I have written often, have the nature of reassembling in your subjective consciousness the exact quality of sensation that you once experienced (qualia memories). These unbidden flashbacks are as ephemeral as snowflakes; the triggered ones you can savour for longer while that perfume or cooking smell lingers. A temporal gap has been crossed - your consciousness has congruence with qualia from the past.

I would posit that more than anything else, you are the sum of all your trains of thought; you are your dreams – this is your essence, not your body and its driver, your armour-clad ego. The reason I exercise and keep fit is not to compete in body-building contests – it’s to keep body and mind together in the current form as long as possible. What's the purpose of me having been alive all this time, to this age?” The answer lies in the additional knowledge and wisdom that I’ve accrued over the years. All the time, I have been making more and more sense of what’s around me. I’ve added detail, finesse, nuance. Things I once only sensed I can now better put into words – but the level of detail could still be finer. I can explain better, justify better to you – but more importantly to myself – avoiding self-delusion. Thirty four winters, thirty five summers to beat my father’s record. I hope to do so. But it's not an aim in itself - the aim is to improve, to carry my thinking to a higher level. And there's the spiritual dimension to all of this too...

A few nights ago, I dreamt of having my own in-dream epistemological guide, to explain to me what new theories of knowledge were being opened up to me as I dreamt. Wow! 

* Line from Sea Breezes, from Roxy Music's eponymous first album. 

This time two years ago:
Great crested grebes and swans hatch

This time four years ago:
Jeziorki birds in the late May sunshine

This time five years ago:
Making sense of Andrzej Duda's win

This time six years ago:
Call it what it is: Okęcie

This time seven years ago:
Three stations in need of repair

This time eight years ago
Late evening, Śródmieście

This time nine years ago:
Ranking a better life

This time 11 years ago:
Paysages de Varsovie

This time 12 years ago:
Spring walk, twilight time