On Thinking

I've been reading a lot of The New Yorker in my downtime at my internship and it's got me heavily considering a career in the media, writing features and cultural commentary and literary for magazines, instead of (or as well as) becoming an academic. But these ideas all really anguish me, because whenever I consider a future career I start thinking about the amount of effort I have to put into things and it stresses me out to no end.

Journalist? I need to travel a lot, interview people, do a lot of research and reading on something I'm not necessarily all that passionate about, write a lot of drafts, trawl through hours of transcripts and notes, figure out how best to write my article so that people will want to read it... So much work.

Author? God, writing is so hard. I've been trying to get back into writing fiction recently and it's killing me. I can't produce anything and I'm embarrassed by anything I write, including this blog post.

Academic? I need to read a lot and think about my problems... I often remind myself that just because I study a humanities subject where there are no correct answers like History of Art, it doesn't mean that my field is easy - I should be experiencing the same kind of suffering when writing my weekly essays as a maths student who is unable to figure out a problem question, and an art historian probably wrestles with one problem/issue in their field throughout their whole career just like a physicist might. (Think Michael Caine's character in Interstellar, being unable to "solve gravity" his entire life.) But that is so hard! Why do I need to use my brain and put effort into things? I don't want to, no matter how passionate I am.

Today, while idly waiting around on an errand for my supervisor, it dawned on me that a possible reason for why I'm so averse to having to figure my way through difficult things - especially when it comes to literary/textual based things like my studies and my future career - isn't just because I'm lazy and lethargic, but actually because I hate to think.

The issue lies in the language in which I think - or rather the language in which I perceive myself to think. I believe that everyone thinks in concepts and images that follow each other in quick succession and also float around like a mind map or a network of relationships, rather than in a constantly-running internal monologue as is usually portrayed in a narrative (sorry, bicameral mind theory from Westworld, which I just finished and am amazed by, partially because I'm inspired by the show's co-creator (but let's face it, the show's her baby), Lisa Joy). I think that we have way more thoughts than we can process or be conscious of, and that immediately after having a thought significant enough for us to actually take note, we repeat it to ourselves linguistically, which is the internal monologue. But the original thought is actually not linguistic. But let's assume for the sake of this post that we can think 'in a language'.

The language I think in is undoubtedly English, as is evident from the fact that my blog posts, which are primarily for me to express myself, are in English. Part of the reason why I like the 'thinking in concepts not in a language' idea above is because I take a lot of pride in being a native speaker of three languages - in fact, it's a huge part of my identity (especially in regards to French and the way it affirms my Swissness and my belonging in my home country), and I don't like to admit that I think in English. Since I definitely don't think in French or Mandarin, I'd rather think in concepts than think in English. Realising that I'm internally monologuing in English makes me anxious and unhappy; waking up from a dream where all the dialogue was in French brings me joy and satisfaction.

When I'm working my way through a maths problem, I think in numbers and letters, which are the same everywhere. When I get really into a problem question, the thoughts don't really occupy my mind - they flow straight from conception onto the page as my hand jots down line after line of algebraic calculations, which all logically follow one another. An equation is simplified, fractioned, values are moved around and transformations occur. I don't need to talk to myself in a specific language, which is why I so thoroughly enjoy watching a question start with something complicated, full of exponents and sines, only to transform, through my hand, into a clean, perfect "equals 2."

When it comes to being given a maths problem and then solving it, I love to think and I love to solve.

Even within maths, my English Anguish is manifested: whereas I can differentiate a purely algebraic problem quickly and effortlessly, the second that the same question is re-formatted into a real life situation, I freeze. A vase with such-and-such volume is leaking water at such-and-such rate... I find myself unable to assign X to the vase and Y to the water's rate of change, and the correct numbers to the Xes and Ys. All I need to do is to convert the text-based question into pure numbers and letters, but that's the one thing I struggle with the most. I think, now, that it's because thinking through the issue - talking to myself and leading myself through the problem - requires me to say "the vase is X and the rate of change is Y..." Whether I'm just telling myself this in my head or actually writing it down on the paper, I have to use English.

It's the same in my studies now: all my essays and most of my readings are done in English, and my essay plan needs to be in English, so to formulate my essay and its plan I will need English thinking. That's why when I'm really in a bind I sometimes bring a friend (usually V who's happy to indulge me) to sit in my room so I can speak at them about my ideas, thus figuring myself out. This is because I hate to speak to myself in English, whether out loud or in my head. Every time I do, I can feel the cage of English closing in on me, limiting my fluency in other languages (particularly French).

I can't stand being Anglophone, so I won't allow myself to think thoughts in my head or on paper with no obstacle, so I find thinking to be a chore, so I find any work that I do that needs me to access my internal monologue to be a chore, so I don't want to work hard. It's nice to know this and I find it such an interesting revelation but I honestly don't see myself changing anytime soon. I could try to comfort myself by saying that it's okay to think in English because I'm going to be writing in English, so I need to ~immerse~ myself in the language, but it's no consolation once I've realised that I do all my Googling/Wikipedia-ing in English and that I can barely function without English.

To reiterate, I'm actually happy with my level of Chinese, which I think is already quite good for someone who didn't grow up in China. It's the French inadequacy when I'm supposed to be fluent that tortures me and is the main reason why I'm so upset about my over-reliance on English. In the latest editorial letter for one of Sine Theta's issues, Iris and I talked about how we felt about our diasporic identities a year after writing the 'third space' conversation and I said that, in part because I've moved to a different country where I've felt the need to differentiate myself from Chinese-Chinese kids, my angst about whether I'm authentically Chinese has become angst about whether I'm authentically diasporic, whether I really have a cross-cultural experience, whether I'm Swiss enough, whether I'm Third Space Enough. And I don't know what to do about it.