“He makes an outrageous statement then backs it up. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him apologize,” a Lyft passenger I once drove said about one of our country’s former leaders.
I’m going to admit something here that I’m not proud of.
I’d been watching an episode of Master of None. Most of it took place in almost total silence. Two deaf girls (twin sisters) were communicating by signing, with subtitles on the screen to convey what each was saying. In the absence of talking, I noticed myself starting to feel relaxed.
It’s important that you know I am a noise-sensitive person. Loud noises like motorcycles and children crying in public create an almost viscerally negative full-body reaction. I wish this wasn’t the case, and mindfulness has helped me, but the noise sensitivity persists.
My mind could have ended with the observation, “I am feeling relaxed.” Instead, though—ever the wayward child that it sometimes is—it proceeded to generate another thought, and then another one after that. Finally, it ended with: “Not ever having to deal with loud noises seems like it would be relaxing at times.”
As soon as I arrive at this insensitive thought, I immediately walk myself back from it.
People who are otherwise good can sometimes say ignorant things. Sometimes it’s spurred by insecurity. Other times it’s from mere thoughtlessness, without any malintent. A guy who hosts a podcast I listen to, for example, once jokingly speculated on the sense of freedom he’d feel if he were homeless (“I wouldn’t have to worry about maintaining a house or paying mortgage”). Even though I know he was just joking, it still seemed an example of a tone-deaf comment.
The mental trash bin
I’ve often wondered how humans get to that point where they’re defending inane, harmful statements to save face.
If we trace the path that my thought took, we can see that the first “thought” began with the observation, “I am feeling relaxed right now.” This observation of my internal state set the groundwork for further thoughts to latch onto. One built on top of another, forming a mental path that my mind continued following. Finally, it reached the trash bin, inside which the fly-infested conclusion resided on top of the heaping refuse pile.
Some people are taking thought paths comparable to the one I described above. They are winding up at similar dumpsters. Rather than stopping in front of the dumpsters though, they jump right on in.
Once I realized this was happening, I slowly walked myself back to the initial observation—“I am relaxed watching this scene”—and remained there.
My answer to the above question is that I think some people are taking thought paths comparable to the one I described above. They are winding up at similar dumpsters. Rather than stopping in front of the dumpsters though, they jump right on in.
Some people have no interest in catching themselves before going in there. They don’t challenge their junk thoughts. They think ignorant things, verbalize them and then refuse to walk them back. They go on to defend them, rather than acknowledging that the mind churns out all kinds of nonsense throughout the day and not all of it is worth announcing to the Twitter-verse.
A former leader of my country may be the most prominent example of a person who not only cranks out junk thoughts, but also righteously defends, bolsters and promulgates them.
To bring it back: We can try to just remember that the human mind is the landing pad for thousands of thoughts every day, many of which are nonsense. This doesn’t mean we have to feel guilty for having them. By their very nature, thoughts and feelings that spontaneously enter our minds without warning are beyond our control.
What we can control is whether we act on them. It’s our choice to either pursue or ignore a thought. We can also choose how we behave in response to them. As Gavin Edwards wrote in his book Kindness and Wonder (based on the life of Fred Rogers), “Lady Aberlin assures X the owl that when he has angry thoughts, they don’t hurt anybody—only actions do. ‘That man didn’t shoot the other man just by thinking about it,’ she tells him.”
The mere arrival of negative thoughts sometimes ignites a flicker of brief shame, but I realize that the difference now is that I don’t act on them. That to me is something worth celebrating and acknowledging. After all, it’s how we respond to our feelings that matters more than whether we have them. So be gentle and kind with yourself.
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