Here's what he meant: let's say you're in a tight turn. It's very easy, when you're inexperienced, to get nervous and look down, or look at whatever obstacle might be closest. I can't explain the physics or the psychology of it, but I know that when you do that... you're far more likely to fall. "Look at the wall, go into the wall."
I don't want to drive into a wall.
So, riding into a turn, I look ahead. The bike, in a sense, follows my thoughts.
I said I can't explain the physics or the psychology of this, but I have some ideas about the psychology. I have on occasion been advised by people with Qualifications and Credentials to avoid "negative self-talk." We probably all are prone to this from time to time: that familiar old rant we subject ourselves to about how x or y never works out for us, or how we're overlooked because we're too young or too old or didn't go to the right school or sucked at math. Why is it, we might ask, that I never catch a fucking break!? Or variations on that theme.
And if I'm alone in this, gee, am I embarrassed! But I don't think I am, so I will forge ahead.
Naturally, just as we're pulled into the wall when we look it while rounding a turn on a motorcycle, so are we pulled into whatever negative behavior or circumstance we focus on in our negative self talk. I imagine that concept is familiar, even if from time to time it is very hard to use in order to avoid the negative self talk itself.
But I really have a larger point, which is playing out in Huttle on Fire, the 4th book in The Chronicles of Hurtle Trilogy. To illustrate that point, here's a brief excerpt, which is set in a lecture hall at Yale, where a professor of Neurobiology is speaking to a class of freshmen about the brain's use of energy. A student raises his hand.
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"Professor Winkler smiled and gestured to him with the tip of his whiteboard marker. “Yes, Mr...?”
The boy smiled. “Uh, Twombly.”
“What have you got to add, Mr.
Uhtwombly?”
The boy rolled his eyes, then
lowered his hand. “I’m wondering where that energy goes.”
“Goes?”
The boy scooted forward. “After,
say, some dude thinks some… thought. What happens to the energy?”
Winkler sat on the corner of the
desk. “I’m afraid I don’t understand your question.”
Twombly bit his lower lip, then
spoke. “Well, the law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither
be created nor destroyed, so--”
“Ah! I see you’ve been taking
physics, too!” A chuckle rippled through the class. “Well, in the case of
bio-electrical processes, that energy—that twelve-point-five watts of
electrical stimulus--transforms to heat. Body heat,” Winkler explained. “Now, I
think we can--”
“But I don’t really mean, exactly,
just that type of physical energy.”
“What other type of energy is
there?” Reflexively, Winkler’s eyebrows rose with the question.
Twombly looked up, as though
whatever thought he was searching for hovered overhead. “I mean… thought
energy.”
“Which is…?” Beyond the firing of
synapses, no one really knew what thoughts were anyway. But that went beyond
the scope of this class. Still, the conversation had taken an interesting turn,
even if it was off-topic. Some of the other students had set down their phones
and were watching Twombly intently. This was a positive sign.
The boy clearly felt their
attention, and sat up straighter in his chair. “Well, you know how sometimes,
if you want some particular thing, you think about it… and then it happens?”
Winkler’s shoulders sank. He had
hoped the boy had an interesting point somewhere in there, but this was
sounding very squishy indeed. He glanced at the clock. Two minutes. Why not
indulge the young man’s curiosity? He was just a freshman, after all, and it
took a certain degree of courage to speak up in a large lecture hall. “Go on.”
-----------
As everyone's sixth grade book reports ended, "To find out what happens next, read the book!" And when it's done... which is some time off... I hope you will. In the meantime, what was interesting to me was exactly Twombly's question: what happens to 'thought energy?' Those of us who engage in occasional negative self talk have probably concluded that it reinforces the negative emotion or behavior. I suppose the opposite is true of positive self talk. But what about all of the other thoughts that pass through out brains? What about, let's say, those lengthy dialogues we stage in our minds when grappling with some issue? Or those witty remarks that arise a couple of hours after they might have really effectively put another in his place? What about the imagined conversation you had with person who you had a fleeting moment of connection with and did not, in fact, approach? What about that fantastic scene you imagined for your novel, yet never wrote?
What Twombly and I are wondering is this: if thoughts about ourselves manifest themselves in behavior and reality, what happens to all the other thoughts?
Enter, the Multiverse. People with Qualifications and Credentials--specifically, physicists of some renown--posit the existence of not just multiple dimensions, but of multiple universes. Trillions of them. I couldn't explain the physics of it to anymore than I could explain String Theory, but the idea is very intriguing just the same. It's my conceit in Huttle on Fire that all of those thoughts are manifested in other universes, some probably matching our own entirely, save for the addition of one person, or one event, or... maybe you just have a different favorite color. In one universe, you might have gotten that job--or gotten fired from it--and everything would have been different. In another, you turned left instead of right. Or you voted Republican. Or were born in Somalia.
In Huttle on Fire, Chris Westphal is an author who has written several books about a character named Tom Huttle. Tom Huttle is aware of the books, and they are very embarrassing to him. Consequently, he detests Chris Westphal. Can't say I blame him, either. Chris Westphal has often really made Tom look like a fool. As a fictional creation of Chris Westphal, Tom Huttle was "born," if you will, of Chris Westphal's "thought energy." Because our thoughts manifest in reality, he does exist, albeit in another universe. Tom Huttle is a writer of cheesy espionage novels, and the characters in those also exist, in yet another universe.
In Huttle on Fire, all of these universes crash together. I'm very curious about what will happen!
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