Whatever be the scientific basis for this assertion, it does have merit. To ruminate, think deeply about something, is an art that we have forgotten. We read but do not reflect. We listen, we react to circumstances, but do not pause to think. Is it to do with the fact that we have also stopped walking in the manner as Thoreau used to?
For Thoreau walking was not an exercise; it was ‘an enterprise and adventure of the day’. Most of us these days walk with one eye on the phone, headphones on, doing little justice to either walking or whatever we are listening to. With the cacophony of noise surrounding your brain, you cannot think.
Thoreau’s ruminations do give much food for thought. Thinking whereby you contemplate, meditate, analyse an issue gives your subsequent actions weight. Thinking involves reading, listening, contemplating and weighing all sides of an issue. The result of such an exercise leads to what Socrates called ‘critical thinking’, the process whereby you arrive at both meaning and truth. It was Descartes who famously said, ‘Cogito ergo sum’ – I think, therefore I am. This distinguishes us from other beasts.
