Talking Heads

I hear voices

Thoughts are funny things.

Something in your head controls you and determines everything about you. However you feel - whether you're happy, sad, curious, disinterested, jealous, gruntled or simply, as you are now, plaintive - it's literally all in your head.

So, it comes as something of revelation, to discover that while many people sub-vocalise their thoughts, there are some that do not.

If, like me, you are one of the "head talkers", the notion that some people do not construct their thoughts as words that they "hear" in their minds is - well - mind blowing. How does that work? Like, at all?

But on further consideration, it quickly becomes apparent that many of our thoughts, are never sub-vocalised. Even, the most Vulcan of head talkers, doesn't pick up a hot pan and say to themselves, "Ooh, fiddlesticks! That Pot's uncomfortably warm. I'd best put it back down, a bit sharpish, like."

We simply react. The thought transcends the language that describes it.

In a similar vein, our dreams are lost to us, our fears are uncertain and our desires are, often, inexplicable - even to ourselves.

Some thoughts, therefore, cannot be put in to words.

Jung said:

"A man likes to believe that he is the master of his soul.

But as long as he is unable to control his moods and emotions, or to be conscious of the myriad secret ways in which unconscious factors insinuate themselves into his arrangements and decisions, he is certainly not his own master."

And I think, in my overly Vulcan way, this is incredibly comforting.

It's a relief to be reminded that our feelings and emotions do not need to be reduced to mere words to be real or valid.

Plus, it helps me to understand how animals (and mine in particular) experience the world in a deep and extraordinarily meaningful way; despite lacking the privilege of words to populate their thoughts.

So, next time someone tells you that their dog really understands them, I dunno, maybe try to think about it from the dog's point of view?

 

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