Blank Time

One of the most interesting personal changes that I have undergone during my time on the islands has been the changed allocation of thinking time. In America, when I have nothing to do I will usually find something to do within a few minutes. If I am bored, I can always switch on the TV or browse the internet. I can talk to family or friends, or find some task to fill up my time.

            Life on the islands is much different. When boredom comes along, there is nothing to alleviate it with. There are no entertainment systems to numb my mind, there are few activities to occupy my attention, and relaxed silence is preferred over casual conversation. We just tend to “tick away the moments that make up a dull day, fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way”

            This lack of things to distract my mind and keep it active during lull periods has led to an overabundance of inner monologue thinking. I will sometimes sit for hours and barely say a handful of words. The only time I would ever do that in America is while watching a movie or sleeping in my bed. But here, I do it all the time. My blank time is no longer filled with things, it is filled with nothingness.

            However, I have realized that this nothingness is not worthlessness. The blank time that I spend thinking has opened up new avenues of thought and given me a deeper understanding of the world around me. I carefully sift through my visual surroundings with a fine-toothed comb and notice minute details about the people and things around me. My mind doesn’t go blank, instead it wanders around in a maze of thought until it finds something to settle on. My brain finally has the time to fully develop ideas instead of creating the beginning of notions and then having my thought process interrupted by external stimuli. There just aren’t a lot of active external stimuli to capture my attention. So I concentrate on what’s going on inside my head and weave convoluted networks of random thoughts.  I ponder intellectual puzzles, work through personal dilemmas, reconstruct the past and plan the future.

            Through most of my life, my thought processes are dictated by the structure of the environment around me. If I am in class, I think about school. If I am watching a movie, I think about the movie. If I am playing rugby, I think about rugby. If I am having a conversation, I think about the conversation. But here, the structure of my environment is stagnant and relatively unchanging. My thought processes have nothing directing their flow, so I am free to have unrestrained thinking.

            I have learned to harness the unlimited power of free time and transform it from frustrating boredom into insightful thinking. I guess this is what monks and philosophers strive after.  Isolation that gives the opportunity to think in silence. This lifestyle is in stark contrast to how I have lived previously. I was always a talking, walking, doing and going kind of guy. I never spent time alone in my room or in quiet contemplation. I thought it was a waste of life to sit around doing nothing. But now I realize that having time to cultivate inner thoughts is not a waste of life, but rather a way to enrich it through the personal improvement of spirit and mind.