Too Much Food For Thought
Reflecting on the ways we unconsciously consume, create, and congest ourselves with sweet and buttery morsels of information from an endless buffet
"Learning without thinking means labor lost; thinking without learning is perilous."
- Analects of Confucius
I’ve been thinking a lot these days about how we consume and create information. You can imagine every interaction with the world outside as inhalation. Everything that you do, say, write or create as a result is an exhalation. In this way, our information appetite is akin to breathing or eating. Everything that we do involves an exchange and transformation of energy, and information is similar here.
Imagine for a moment you are starting your day. The echoes of your memories reverberate in your fading dream. Rising from the bed, you’re bombarded by concerns about your meetings in the afternoon. Notifications from your phone, lingering tastes from breakfast, the mood in your house that morning, and your swirling internal voice quickly turn your head into an over-crowded conference call.
As you go through your day, that information begins to transmute into your actions. It evolves into cascading trains of thought, making their way back out via your kind or disgruntled interactions and the signals you impart back into the noisy world. Your ripples extend outward as you wade through time’s current.
Just like the lungs and stomach, the mind eventually ends up overfull. There is a threshold after which you’re just bloated. Old inputs must be processed -given time to digest- before new information can be of much use. Everything you cram in at this point just gets muddled in confusion. You’re mentally fried.
I like to envision this as a literal food analogy from time to time. Imagine you are a plate. Each interaction with others or your environment is a pancake. You can then frame each notion, conversation, every expectation layered on from outside, and your internal dialogue; it all becomes food for thought.
Now you have to digest them and finishing what’s already on your plate. Since everyone processes and experiences differently, the kind or quantity that overwhelms some may be palatable or energizing to others. It all becomes an intimate exploration of your mental appetite and the “foods” that keep you healthy.
I love thinking of it this way. It allows you to ask yourself:
”How is my diet treating me?”