I've been thinking...

(Or I think I've been thinking.)

Here's what's been on my mind these days: thoughts. Thoughts are always on my mind, of course, because that's where they reside. Right? Maybe? What is my mind? Or, as the Pixies hauntingly sing, Where is my mind? Wheyyyyyre is my mind? Let's just stick with thoughts for now because mind seems more cosmic to me. Although, what is occurring to me lately, is that thoughts are quite cosmic too.

I keep hearing my teachers say that thoughts arise and dissolve. Okay, sure. I experience this to be true. But also they say that we are not in control of our thoughts, they arise of their own volition. I've been playing with this lately. I have been trying to originate a thought. To see where is actually begins. Like I'll think, "I'm going to think about cars right now." But even that thought wasn't originated by me. Why cars? Who said cars? I don't care about cars. Why not trees? I'd love to think about trees. So even before I have started my thought experiment, the thought has already thought me. The thoughts seem quite autonomous. "I" did not think them. Even if I plan to think something, the thought comes from somewhere before I can plant it myself to be thought.

So what? Who cares? Why bother thinking about this on a sunny Sunday morning when I could be outside, walking in the woods. I mean, there must be some thought volition on my part. I am writing a blog on thoughts because I am thinking about how perplexing thoughts are and I want to write about them. But is that just the same thing as the car thought? Am I just being thought by my thoughts whether it is about the meaning of thoughts or about The Great British Bake-off, am I ever the originator?

If not, then what the actual fuck?

If I don't originate my thoughts, then am I a puppet on the strings of Consciousness? Whose consciousness? Where is the free will? Who am I? Does "I" even exist, particularly if "I' don't think my own thoughts? This kind of thinking (whose thinking?!) will surely soon end up in a realm with goats in waistcoats and top hats. Some with tap shoes and definitely monocles.

Ya think?