The process of arriving

I’ve been reading excepts from Daniel Kahnemann’s new book ‘Thinking, fast and slow’. His idea is that the human brain is wired to think in two different ways.  Fast thinking is the automated, often emotionally based habitual mode of responding. Its probably adaptive to be able to react and decide instinctively. We often identify these fast thinking patterns as our personality, or as ‘responding to my gut instincts’ or ‘following my heart’.

Slow thinking is reasoned, difficult and hence slow. It allows us to evaluate responses and to change habitual patterns. I notice how I now need to think through all my responses in a country where the ground rules are very different. 

Novelty as slowing down the passage of time, but I notice that it is also switching me into slow thought. Walking home last night through tiny lanes, I’m thinking ‘Okay, now I’m living in a small Turkish village’, but the images of the purple bougainvillea draped white-washed cottages and the relentless sun drenched quality of the light seem to demand a change in my thinking.

Its that kind of ‘traveller-consciousness’ I experienced as a young back-packer, where everything was so remarkable that I had to diarise and communicate in long missives. I find I’m now noticing things and thinking about them as if for the first time. For example, flying into Abu Dhabi, I really notived the novel shapes of the housing compounds, their sharp geometry contrasting to the flowing shapes of the sea of sand.

This novelty seems to be a trigger for switching me into slow thought. Time is slowing, the days are incredibly long again, and everything is more remarkable, nothing is taken for granted.  And then the questions arise: ‘Why am I here, why did we choose this] or ‘This is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife’ (to plagiarize Talking Heads). Everything invites an examination of habitual living.