Saturday, May 24, 2008


Some people collect butterflies, some people collect stamps, and some people collect thoughts. Thought collectors always carry a small notebook to be able to quickly jot down interesting thoughts as they flutter by. Thought collecting is a weird hobby. What is the point with it? To eventually write a book filled with interesting thoughts and make some money? The whole thing is very sad. Isn’t it like trying to sell sand in the Sahara dessert?

Anyway, at some point in life most people realize that thoughts are not that important. The brain is constantly producing thoughts, like the kidneys are producing urine. But absolutely no one is collecting urine to show off.

Well, also many butterfly collectors eventually loose interest in collecting butterflies. What is the point with it really if one doesn’t have scientific reasons for it? It is possible to find butterfly collections in any museum of natural history. One can look at dead butterflies there. Or one can enjoy the living ones as they flutter by.

*

I don’t think that daydreaming is a bad thing. I think it is healthy. It is not possible and it is not necessary to always be in the “real” world. It is OK to be lost in dreamland every once in a while. The point is what kind of dreamland one is lost in. Is it a terrible place? Is it a dungeon where one is brooding on revenge, or is it a sexual fantasy where one is having a wonderful time? It is not possible and it is not necessary to, for example, be fully present when one is driving a car where the traffic is not to heavy. One can let the autopilot do the driving while one is listening to the radio and singing along with the music.

But, today many people live all their life in a virtual reality with almost no connection to the “real” world. This is a problem. Many kids today have absolutely no interest in the everyday reality. They shut everything out. Television, computer games, portable computer games, cell phones with computer games, iPod’s and all kind’s of technical appliances makes it possible be completely lost somewhere else. And the big problem is that it is not their own dream worlds they are lost in. It is someone else’s. Their own reality is a foreign land to them. Many people today can’t stand their own thinking, how they are, what they look like, what they are and how the world is functioning. It will be a long and hard way for them to reconnect even sporadically to their own reality.