Speechless
I've loved words since I first began to understand them.
I love reading them. I love writing them. I love hearing others read, speak, sing, whisper, and shout them.
I love to play with them and read between them.
I love to watch others stretch and expand language in poetry, fiction, and film.
I'm fascinated by how we can use words to tell the truth, to lie, and to blur the line in between.
I spend a lot of time trying to find the right words to describe experiences and feelings. I hunt them down. I wait for them. I ask them to be in my show and then make them audition. I evaluate them and try to imagine how they'll be heard. I'm doing it right now.
But when I first started practicing mindfulness, my relationship to the words in my mind — aka verbal thoughts — was contentious. I considered them to be my opponents. Like most people, I thought the point of meditation was to try not to think. When verbal thoughts were present, I was not.
Am I thinking? I think I'm thinking. Crap!
I'm doing it again. Rats!
Start over. Don't think.
Hey, I think I've got it. I'm not thinking. D'oh!
Try harder. C'mon!
What is relaxing about this?
I must be the only person who can't do it.
Would you please stop?
Please?
I give up...
There's a show-stopping problem with this approach: It's completely normal for the mind to think in words.
Expectations have to be adjusted if you want to stay in the game.
The presence of thoughts doesn’t mean you’re not present.
It means you’re alive. It means your nervous system is working.
Inadvertently making an enemy out of thoughts is one of the most common reasons people abandon mindfulness.
This is a trap we can learn to avoid.
It’s possible to be mindful even when you are thinking
As Shinzen Young explained to the Harvard Medical School community in March 2012, “When does your thought about the past or future arise? It arises in the present moment. And if in the present moment, you know you’re thinking about the past or future, you’re still mindful.”
The real obstacle is not being intimately familiar with how attention works.
We can become more familiar with the thinking process by being habitually curious about it.
This partly means practicing listening to the words in our mind as sounds instead of trying to get rid of them. Sometimes. Just for a few seconds. This takes practice. Let’s be honest, it takes a lot of practice.
But there are ordinary circumstances that can help inform this approach to relating to our thoughts.
Spontaneous speechlessness
There are times when I'm unable to find the right words.
There are times when the environment is so loud or distracting that I can't hear myself think.
There are times when listening to people speak in another language forces me to drop my need to decipher it and to hear the musicality that becomes obvious when I give up.
There are times when I observe my verbal thoughts spooling out endlessly, but at other times, I’m able to notice the pauses between the sentences, words, and phrases.
Instead of approaching these situations as problems to solve, we can use them as opportunities to help gradually transform our relationship to the verbal side of thinking.
There can be something almost magical about being able to find and arrange words in ways that improve understanding and even shrink the emotional distance between us.
Intentionally speechless
There can also be unspeakable freedom in letting words escape you every now and then.
Listen for commas, periods, and question marks when someone is speaking. Start with situations where the stakes are low (news, commercials, strangers in public) and then extend the exploration into work meetings, engaging movies, and difficult conversations.
When rehearsing for a difficult conversation, experiment with dropping the search for the perfect talking points and try to feel the emotions in the body that are fueling the need to be heard.
Training your attention by listening closely to words as sounds can enrich your lifelong relationship with the language you rely on to navigate your life.
It might even rekindle the wordless wonder that existed before you developed the ability to comprehend words.
