Stymied

Thinking: it’s tricky. It’s easier said than done.

I have an old analogy – to me it’s old, anyhow; it may be new to you – of trying to break down a stone fortress with a wet sponge. It came to me when I first came across the fortress of German Grammar. My mind was the wet sponge. No matter how gamely I hurled it against at the walls of Grammar, the stone rebuffed the sponge; my understanding slip-slid down rock face of nominative, accusative, genitive, dative and landed with a splot on the ground.  

Now, my mind’s still the wet sponge. The fortress changes – perhaps there are many fortresses. But today’s is the question of How to Be; How to Think. I want to think! I do. I want to lose myself in thought and emerge, weeks, months, years later, richer and wiser, full of answers; sure of myself, my place in the world. But somehow my mind shies away from the starting block; I don’t even begin. I hedge the question; like the teenage me, procrastinating over the exam revision, colour coding the revision timetable rather than making a start on the work – I do nothing. I fidget around the edges of the problem, and I don’t throw myself in.

Stymied.