We might suppose that the best place to think would be a large room with a big desk, plenty
of natural light and a window with a view – perhaps onto water or a park. This is
the premise behind the layout of most offices. The nearer one gets to the top, the closer
one’s work station will approximate to this supposed ideal: in tribute to the quality
of thinking that, ideally, one would do there. Bosses tend to have big desks and even larger
views. But these assumption are not – in fact – really true to the way our minds
work. The primary obstacle to good thinking is not a
cramped desk or an uninteresting horizon. It is, first and foremost, anxiety. Often
the most profound thoughts we need to grapple with have a potentially disturbing character.
If we were to pinpoint them accurately and get clear about their significance, there
could be a risk. We might discover that some of our past, rather cherished, beliefs were
not as wise as we’d supposed; we might realise we were previously deeply wrong about something;
we might have to make some significant and tricky changes to our lives. As these potential
implications start to come vaguely into view, our inner censor, motivated by a desire for
calm rather than growth, gets alarmed. A vigilant part of the self gets agitated; it distracts
us, it makes us feel tired or gives us a strong need to go online. Skilfully, it confuses
and muddles our train of thought. It blocks the progress we were starting to make towards
ideas that – though important and interesting – also presented marked threats to short-term
peace. It in this context that the shower emerges as so helpful to the way our minds
work and earns the right to be honoured as one of the best places on earth in which to
do any kind of serious reflection. Amidst the crashing water and the steam and with
a few minutes of respite before the day starts, the mind is no longer on guard. We’re not
supposed to be doing much inside our heads; we’re mainly occupied with trying to soap
our backs and properly rinse our hair. The ideas that have been half-forming at the back
of our minds, ideas about what the true purpose of our lives might be and what we should do
next, keep up their steady inward pressure – but now there is a lot less to stop them
reaching full consciousness. We’re not meant to be thinking and so – at last – we can
think freely and courageously. .This quality of sufficient – but not overwhelming – distraction
might equally well be present when we’re driving down the highway or walking in a forest;
when there’s just enough for the managerial timid side of the mind to be doing to keep
it from interfering with our authentic and bolder inner machinations. Our world places
a very high premium on good ideas – but spends very little serious effort in investigating
why we find it extraordinarily hard to hatch them. Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote: ‘In
the minds of geniuses, we find our own neglected thoughts.’ In other words, so-called geniuses
don’t have thoughts different from the ones most of us have. They’re just a lot better
at not allowing their inhibitions and preconceptions to get in the way of properly entertaining
them. In a utopian future, we would get a lot more creative about what real thinking
is and where it happens. We’d learn that the real enemy of good thinking isn’t a
small desk or a modest view: it is – almost always – anxiety, for which there can be
few better cures than that library of our deeper selves: the morning shower.
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