Can I speak with your inner monologue?
Letter Zero.5
Dear friend,
I read a sad story written by someone who thought he was the same as everyone else.
Ryan clearly heard an inner monologue, a voice in his head narrating his every thought. Because he heard a voice, he assumed everyone had the same voice speaking their thoughts. Ryan’s reality began unraveling when he stumbling across a tweet that said,
“Fun fact: some people have an internal narrative and some don’t. As in, some people’s thoughts are like sentences they ‘hear,’ and some people just have abstract non-verbal thoughts, and have to consciously verbalize them. And most people aren’t aware of the other type of person.” - @KylePlantEmoji
Skeptical, Ryan asks a friend if she had an inner monologue. She explains that she doesn’t hear a voice in her head and Ryan begins to lose his grip on reality. He decides to interview his friend, and despite his attempt to remain open to her alternative mental methods, he can barely contain his urge to ridicule her. It’s painful to watch.
Ryan is not alone. In fact, his reaction to discovering that people think differently might be the norm. It’s easy to assume that our mental patterns are normal, and other people are broken. How did we get so brainwashed that we can’t cope with different modes of thought?
This story stuck with me for two reasons. First, I feel sorry for Ryan. I think he is somewhat serious when he says his “life began to slowly spiral out of control” after he realized that his thoughts were uniquely his own. School doesn’t equip us to manage the unique sparks bouncing around in our skulls. Instead, education fools us into believing that we are all the same, simple empty vessels waiting to hook our brains up to a knowledge tube. If our thoughts deviate too far from the average, we can medicate our minds closer to normal.
The second reason it stuck with me is because it’s a good question. What do our thoughts sound like? It is a valuable exercise to try and observe what is happening in our brain at the inception of thought. In my upcoming book I call this entity user zero, the thing inside us that exists above our thoughts. Which brings me to a homework assignment I have for you this week…
Monitor your mind and tell me what it feels like inside your skull. Do you hear a voice? Does the pattern change when you are in a flow state? Do you talk to yourself out loud? Report back to me, I would love to hear what it feels like in your head.
I’ll write again next Sunday. Stay creative.
Your friend,
Adrian
P.S. If you enjoy this topic you might also like an article I wrote about how to use Apple’s AirPod Pros to hack your brain.