It’s absolutely true – I make it all up as I go along – everything I write, well obviously, otherwise it would be plagiarism – which it is not – or AI making it up for me – which is possibly even worse. But I also make up what I think – this is interesting, as I am hardly ever aware that this is going on, and I am even less aware of what exactly is going on – I find this puzzling and intensely interesting at the same time – till we get to the point where we say “What was I thinking?” or someone else sweetly asks “What are you thinking?” – at which point the wandering mind immediately goes blank, and recollection is impossible.

I also make up a lot of stuff I feel – it’s all, well not all, but mostly hinged onto, attached to, or hooked up by my unconscious thinking – that endless thought train that chugs along doing its own thing, and suddenly you are in a really stupid mood and you have no idea how you got there – I mean, how did that happen? This mood has nothing to do with what is going on in my life, or if it happens to you, which I’m sure it does, it has nothing to do with your life either – and sometimes if you pay attention to how your thoughts chug along, you can see, feel, know exactly where that feeling gets hooked up – try it, watch it – it’s crazy how it works!

The surroundings also create my thoughts, unless it’s my thoughts that create my surroundings – they certainly create my reactions to them, or how I act within my surroundings – from “oh what a lovely day” to “bloody hell it’s raining AGAIN,” to “how lovely,” and gosh! “what a rotten person, let’s avoid them and walk the other way” – everything is controlled by these uncontrollable thoughts.

The oddest thing of all is they are so boringly predictable – every day, at the same time, while I’m doing the same things, I have the same thoughts, over and over again, and I don’t even spot most of them – like I said earlier, they chug along on their own, and I am hardly even aware of them – and they cause me to act, they cause me to feel, they cause me to behave in certain ways – and they are very, very hard to weed out – swallowing roundup won’t do it – we need another lever, or crowbar.

And there are choices here – meditation is one, when you sit about till you are so bored your mind becomes the focus of attention, and you finally start watching your own thoughts like it’s some kind of TV script – which it sort of is. Recall exercises are another – which is hard, trying to remember what you were just thinking – very hard at first, because you can’t – it’s like trying to remember dreams when you’ve spent a lifetime ignoring them on purpose – it takes months of work and attention – same with recall – so you have to swot like a teenager to get your mind to do it at all – anyway, I recommend trying to remember your dreams anyway, so you start getting to grips with what is actually going on in your head.

At a given moment you notice that you make it all up – all your thoughts, all your feelings and reactions and actions – all of them are made up, out of your thoughts, which you have never ever exerted any control over. Perhaps it’s time to start thinking about thinking –

let me know what you think – as I’m not even sure half the time what I think

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