I used to have meta-discussions with my friend “J”, about the types of conversations that happen in different relationships, and how they tend to follow a pattern. For example:
- Person 1: expresses a want
- Person 2: expresses, in turn, a need
- Person 1: [experiences frustration, thinking Person 2 is prioritizing their wants over Person 1’s own]
- Person 2: [experiences frustration, thinking Person 1 is prioritizing their wants over Person 2’s needs]
We can call this a pattern, sure. But it felt like more than that. The way a conversation flows has a shape, with associated emotions and sensory information. It’s three-dimensional, not just a 2D line on a map.
How we think: pictures, words, or…?
Similarly, I’ve always heard that people think in either pictures or in words. I don’t think in pictures at all; my ability to form actual pictures in my mind is extremely limited. And while I am able to think in words, it’s not really my “first language”, mentally speaking.
So, how do I think? I wasn’t able to put it into words until I read “Thinking in Pictures”, by Temple Grandin. She writes:
- “Visual thinkers, like me, think in photographicaly specific images…
- “Music and math thinkers think in patterns…
- “Verbal logic thinkers think in word details…”
Oh! I think in shapes!!
My memories aren’t pictures, or words. They’re shapes of events: a bit of what happened, of where I was, of the feelings I had, of sensory input.
“Thought shapes”
We chose to name this site “Thought Shapes” because life is complex. Thoughts are complex. Words are the best medium we have for communicating about these things.
Stephen King writes:
What Writing Is
“On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft”, 2000
Telepathy, of course. … So let’s assume that you’re in your favorite receiving place just as I am in the place where I do my best transmitting. We’ll have to perform our mentalist routine not just over distance but over time as well, yet that presents no real problem; if we can still read Dickens, Shakespeare, and (with the help of a footnote or two) Herodotus, I think we can manage the gap between 1997 and 2000. And here we go–actual telepathy in action.”
Telepathy takes more work than we’d like, of course. I can’t just want to take the shape from my head and plug it into yours, Matrix-style. I have to figure out the shape of the thought itself, and then translate it, and then put it down on paper. Well, digital paper.
Welcome! Let’s talk a bit, and see where the shape of our thoughts match, and where they fit together like found puzzle pieces.
-JSP