On the Indigestion of the Mind

A fire was burning at a fireplace, and the smoke had spread until all was half-hidden.

A parrot has eaten the seed of the gram and left the husk. A cow has eaten its fodder and scattered half of it about. Two children are playing — one wholly absorbed in a single toy, the other only spreading his many toys around, not playing at all. And a great share of the world's food, they say, is left half-eaten and the other thrown away.

A young man comes, and after we talk a while, tells me he thinks a great deal. Someone else mentions he made himself sick today. Why? Doctors tell him: “Indigestion.”

The man who thinks he is thinking so much is only bringing up what he could not digest. So much pours in from outside that he has no need of it, and the mind cannot work on all of it. We are not thinking more; we are collecting more, and then expelling it — and we call the expelling thought, contemplation. It is neither. It is the indigestion of the mind — the failure to judge, with any precision, how much we can actually take in.