Seize the Thinking Moment
Sometimes thinking moments or writing moments strike us like an illumination. In these moments, allowing ideas space to breathe and express is an existential need. The inspiration burns, consumes, seduces us to attend to it, write it, share it. Articulating is joyful, the effort is obviously and tangibly rewarding, we are pleased with the idea like a mother who has quickly forgotten the pangs of birthing for beholding her work of love. The idea seems to take on its own rights, existing as a child and yet as an object in itself, independent and free, and we are pleased to give it wings. Like the satisfaction of an athlete who has completed their daily workout or a gardener eating their home grown vegetables, we feel high on fulfilling our vocation as rational creatures when the articulation manifests itself.
Sometimes the mood is not quite right for thinking moments or writing moments to come naturally. More often than we would like. If we wait passively for the beautiful inspiration of the muses, our victimhood effortlessly makes excuses for the discrepancy between our ideal self and realized self. The circumstances are not right. The amounts of energy, caffeine, temperature, time, background music, expectations, deadlines, and incentives are not conducive, but rather constrictive. Yet the struggle is inside, anxiety between the heart and the tongue, despair of the soul. We can rather apathetically surrender to the stupor of existence, disgusted with ourself.
Sometimes we decide to ignore the mood or push through the effort, to create the moment. At first to get the blood flowing feels chaotic, ugly, laborious, heavy, painful, and awkward. The work is false, the moment is manufactured, the motive is forced, the thinker is an impostor. Until we work through that moment, into the next moment, and then the next moment. The process might be slow, but we are not focused on watching the evolution take place, we are focused on the work. Then we notice first that the work is not so ugly after all, there may be something interesting to salvage. We can see some ideas, some turns of phrases start to form in a pleasant order despite being hazy or distant in the last moment, now boldly wanting to come into being. The words come easier the more we write. We might not be the impostor after all, but the inspiratus. Circumstances now seem insignificant, or even like defeated foes. We have labored for this state, which brings its own rewarding beauty, richer for having been won. The muses sometimes bless us, yes; yet we are author, creator, thinker of our own existence. We can seize the thinking moment, which sometimes means giving the idea wings or the author—ourself—a voice.
A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.
-Emily Dickinson