| Subject of Thought | Number of Times Thought Occurred per Year (descending order) |
|---|---|
| Family (living) | 1825 |
| Family (deceased) | 730 |
| Body fat | 520 |
| Coffee | 420 |
| Dreams | 360 |
| Writing a poem | 300 |
| People who write more poems, jealousy of | 280 |
| The movements of birds, curiosity of | 220 |
| "Make Your Life" | 200 |
| Moving to the city | 180 |
| Moving to the country | 180 |
| Backyard chickens, or the possibility of a pet duck | 180 |
| Pens | 150 |
| Losing my mind, fear of | 125 |
| Friends, smarter than me | 120 |
| Footnotes and marginalia = happiness | 90 |
| Insensitive people | 81 |
| Flowers and weeds that grow out of cracks in the sidewalk | 70 |
| Sandburg's drunken uncles = houses around here | 50 |
| Trees against a dusk sky, beauty of | 45 |
| Piggyback rides | 32 |
| Peeling a chestnut, joy of | 21 |
| Candle flickers, fire flames | 20 |
| Mitral Valve Prolapse, anxiety of | 18 |
| Cognition, or the brain as machine | 15 |
| Kindness, my being referred to as kind and a mild resentment for it* | 12 |
| Hotel lobbies | 8 |
| The Doppler Effect | 6 |
| Friends - does it matter if I have few? | 5 |
| Minty taste on envelope seal | 3 |
| HTML tags | 1 |
| Whether or not that note I left in the floor is still there | 1 |
| Driveway sealer, scent of | .5 |
There is no way for this list to be accurate, because thought is so fleeting and changing, but it was an interesting exercise to see how even as I wrote the list, my mind was wandering. "Pens? Yes, pens. I forgot them, and they fit more in the middle of the list not at the bottom."
* This has been bothering me for some time, which makes little sense because I consider kindness to be one of the most important things in life, so why would I not want to be considered kind? I think the root of it may have to do with how we view success in our culture. Successful people tend to be unkind and ruthless. Kindness has a flaccidity. This is ridiculous and I should get over it.
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3 comments:
What a marvellous list! In reflective moments I feel that kindness is the most important principle in life, but I am disappointed how rarely I live up to it in reality. It probably does have something to do with the perception issue.
Kindness is stronger if you call it compassion.
Nice list. We definitely think of different things.
Fantastic list. If kindness had a more sporty adjective along with it: radical kindness. Extreme kind. Creative kindness. And especially: Quantum kindness - kindness is always in more than one place at once, and is often changed by how it is observed.
You make really good point about how our culture views kindness as weakness, as passive. I think of all the strength many traditions glean from compassion.
It's non-violent disobedience against the dark.
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