Have you ever been lost in thought? Of course you have. Sometimes it seems our thoughts have a will of their own, guiding us through logical or illogical sequences of sustained intellect. The subjects may vary: our environment, our children, our wives, our work: but the process is typically the same. For some, they speak inside their heads with long internal monologues. For some, pictures form as a primary medium. For some moving images like video play in their head. For others, their thoughts are not so focused. Inside their heads ideological roller coasters barrel along scattered and broken track, rearing out of control in an epic struggle for reason. At times, this is true for all of us: that our thoughts run rampant on painful roads until our voices screech and tears form in our vision. Then the pain comes, and our hair is pulled out, and our teeth clenched. Out eyes grow red and puffy, and our voices crack. For a moment it seems as though all is lost, and nothing will ever be alright. For hours, or days even our minds run crazy, heading for that inevitable brick wall. Then the collision comes, and inside our heads glass shatters, and tires screech.

Among the wreckage of our fractured minds, clarity sets in. The glass stops in the air, and around us the world is still and forgiving. In these moments of extreme weakness, the real and most important realizations are made. Stress seems to fade, and pain recedes in all facets. Familiar faces resurface, and important and long forgotten truths are returned. Smiling faces surround us, and holding hands couple themselves with ours. In the crisp air, we rejoice for a moment that we are alive. As with everything else, moments pass. Soon our minds race again in any and every direction. Events blur, and our lives run.

Stop. Just for a moment, stop yourself and think not about your life, or your family, or your self, but instead about your thoughts. Let them grow and wane with the tides. Let them breath and beat with our bodies. View them not as the voice inside your head, but rather as a whole, coupled with the rest of the self. Slow your breath, and focus your mind. Let the world around you recede, and clarity from inside your own head. Then, reality returns. If you were to think of thoughts in this way, they may seem surreal, or even relaxing. But are thoughts surreal, or rather chaotic. Inside your head tangled clusters of nerves work unending, ejecting particle after particle. Neurotransmitters race across synapsis at unimaginable speeds just to stimulate the next nerve. In a cluttered mess of webbed thought, our real actions are born. Those words that your hear, speaking inside your head, are misguided transmissions arriving at the ears before the arms. Those images are perceptions of things that don’t exist. Soon, the world around us would leave entirely.

Is it our world around us that shapes our perception, or our perception that shapes the world. Is your green the same mine? In our heads, is that green linked to different things? Do the words even sound the same to you? Is your gravity as strong as mine? Does gravity even exist at all? How reliable are those far reaching synapses  Do they feed you accurate information? What if they stopped? What if suddenly your eyes stopped transmitting? Can you even imagine a life without them? How would you shape your world without the ability to see? Imagine if your ears followed suit, feeding you false information. Soon, everything would fall apart as you recede further and further into your own head. Soon, you would not have a self at all, but instead be a fetus, floating in an imaginary recess inside the depths of your own mind.

-RJ / CriusNyx