Mental Stimulation

I crave it. Need it. Yearn for it.

I was walking along outdoors. It was a beautiful day—sunshine playing hide-and-go-seek from behind the interspersed stratocumulus clouds. Folks jog past as I walk down the sidewalk, I step aside to avoid them. Dog walkers galore. Green trees swaying in the gentle breeze, and the incessant hum of chatter from humans around me. Whether they smiled or not, one could tell that these people were relishing the day. But for me it was torture. Why is this? Lack of mental stimulation. I have thus far deduced that my brain desires a problem to solve or something to analyze. Why then could I not conjure up something in my head to occupy my mind? It could be that the incessant words from those in my company made it difficult to concentrate inwardly on other, more engaging, topics. This unstimulating conversation had me struggling to maintain genuine interest.

The question that I was now faced with was, shouldn’t I, as a person, care about what someone is telling me? Is not that the loving thing to do? It seems awfully rude that as someone speaks to me I am not listening to them simply because I find what they are talking about to be mundane. Yes, it’s unloving not to listen but you don’t have to share the same level of interest as the one speaking to you. I think that you ought to regard the person who is expressing themselves. There’s no need to feign interest in what the person is saying. At the very least, to love is to care about the speaker regardless of their speech.

Why does my mind need stimulating? Is this good or bad? I started exploring this with some of the wise men in my life. The conclusion that they come to was that it’s a negative trait. To live inside my head would prevent me from being a relational person. I could become disconnected and distant. However, I believe this to not be the case at all. I watched a TED Talk by Sandrine Thuret about neurogenesis, the creation of new brain cells. I posit that the reason I require mental stimulation is because my brain desires to grow. Thus, I need to be a good cranial steward and feed it. It’s like a petulant child in a high chair demanding its next spoon full of thought provoking information.

What then stimulates my mind? What percentage of my time is my brain unstimulated? Enter: The Quantified Self. In order to find the answer to these questions I am going to measure my level of mental stimulation, about every thirty-minutes, as well as what I am doing. I hope to learn what activities I find most stimulating and what type of activities those are. Which conversations bore me and which do I find riveting?