Life of the Mind

It's a common saying that it isn't a good thing to live too much inside one's own head. But why? Are most people really that prone to depressive thinking, that to be inside their own heads too much is so bad? Aren't there any happy people out there, who will continue to be happy even if inside their own heads all the time?

It's another common saying that crazy people don't see reality the way other people do. Maybe this is why so many writers end up committing suicide or otherwise dying young. What is being a writer but creating reality, seeing things differently from other people? Is hearing and speaking and living with your characters day in and day out really any different from "hearing voices"? I guess in the former, you are aware that they're not real. But how distinct is the line?

I was reading an article in an issue of the New Yorker from a couple of weeks ago, about neuroscience and research into so-called vegetables. In one part of the article, it discussed people with a certain condition, who are not aware that they see or hear something, but react to the stimulus nevertheless. For example, they are shown two pictures, one of a burning house, and one of a nice, normal house. They are not aware of what they are seeing, don't know that they're seeing anything, because some wire in their brains got crossed somehow. But when asked which picture they preferred, they almost always pick the one with the normal house.

It made me wonder if there isn't some level of "vision" out there that "normal" people haven't achieved, that we are, all of us, deficient and missing a piece of the picture. And yet we feel its presence. Maybe God lives out there. We don't know we're seeing Him, but, for the most part, we choose to live in the house where He is.

And maybe it's like being a writer, an artist. Maybe there's something out there we don't see, but somehow, it makes its way into our subconscious. And it guides us.