Inside My Head

Given the triumphant academic setting here
An obvious question is how much of this work
Of adjusting our default setting
Involves actual knowledge or intellect
This question gets very tricky
Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education
At least in my own case
Is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff

To get lost in abstract arguments inside my head
Instead of simply paying attention
To what is going on right in front of me
Paying attention to what is going on
Inside me
As I'm sure you guys know by now
It is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive
Instead of getting hypnotized
By the constant monologue inside your own head
It may be happening right now

Twenty years after my own graduation
I have come gradually to understand
That the liberal arts cliché about
Teaching you how to think
Is actually shorthand for a much deeper
More serious idea
Learning how to think
Really means learning how to exercise some control
Over how and what you think
It means being conscious and aware enough
To choose what you pay attention to
And to choose how you construct meaning from experience

Learning how to think
Learning how to think
Learning how to think
Learning how to think

Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life
You will be totally
Hosed
Think of the old cliché about, quote
"The mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master."

This
Like many clichés
So lame and unexciting on the surface
Actually expresses a great and terrible truth
It is not the least bit coincidental that adults
Who commit suicide with firearms
Almost always shoot themselves in
The head
The head
They shoot the terrible master
And the truth is that most of these suicides
Are actually dead long before they pull the trigger

And I submit that this is what the real
No bullshit value of your liberal arts education
Is supposed to be about
How to keep from going through your comfortable
Prosperous
Respectable adult life
Dead
Unconscious
A slave to your head
And to your natural default setting of being uniquely
Completely
Imperially alone
Day in and day out
That may sound like hyperbole
Or abstract nonsense
Let's get concrete
The plain fact is that you graduating seniors
Do not yet have any clue what
'Day in day out'
Really means

Learning how to think
Learning how to think
Learning how to think
Learning how to think

Learning how to think
Learning how to think
Learning how to think
Learning how to think