This is my final blog post on the P.M. Forni book I’ve been reading lately: “The Thinking Life.” I finally finished the book this week. As I said in a couple of earlier blog posts, although Forni continually said he was advocating more “serious thinking” in our daily lives, I felt maybe he was really talking about a meditative process that tried to *avoid* conscious thinking.
But now I think I understand better what he’s talking about, and I think I also know a bit more about meditation. To my mind, Forni is definitely talking about serious conscious thinking, although I would say a Buddhist / meditative / mindfulness sensibility definitely pervades the book. I used to think that meditation meant something like focusing on a word or an image or breathing, and avoiding conscious thought — while still being very aware of thoughts as they would come and go.
The goal of meditation, I thought, was to still the mind and naturally reduce the number of thoughts that stirred up the pool of the mind, so to speak. But since then, through a “mind series” of meditations I’ve been taking through Headspace (GetSomeHeadspace.com), I’ve learned how to drop a serious question into the quiet focus on the breathing and watch what feelings arise. So the meditations are becoming more directed and more focused on dealing with issues of impermanence/change and acceptance.
So, just one example of Forni’s meditation/mindfulness sensibility:
Well, Andy Puddicombe of Headspace continually urges us to “be present in the moment.” And on p. 33 of his book, here’s Forni: “We have been chronically unable to be really present in the moment…. By slowing down and paying attention to what lies in the folds of the moment, today’s legions of the mindful receive peace of mind in reward. If life is valuable, it only makes sense to attend to it constantly. Focus on and do justice to whatever you are doing, no matter how mundane it may seeem. If you are peeling an apple, peel it well. If you are preparing a presentation, do it attentively.”
Forni’s a thoughtful guy and a good writer — in fact, I learned in the book that he’s Italian-born, that his first language was Italian, and that he learned English at a very young age. He writes fluently and in simple and colloquial English. The one quibble I have about the book is that the very strong foundation he sets up in the early chapters of the book seem to give way in later chapters to a more traditional “self-help book” / motivational speaker kind of approach. But his “study questions” and action plans and counsel are alll good. So no argument with that.
Bottom line, Forni argues that we should forsake the current age of distraction in favor of the thinking life, “which entails engaging in life fully by placing serious thinking at the center of it.” Life is important, he says, and brief, and we need to live it thoughtfully.
Wordnado 