Talking to no one.
yagr
Veteran
Hello everyone. I have a rather odd question today. Everyone is familiar with the idea of ‘talking to oneself’ but I’ve never heard anyone define it. In that way, it seems to be similar to concepts such as ‘love’ or ‘God’. You can ask a thousand people for their definition, of the latter examples, and while most will struggle to encapsulate such a concept in words, the only consistency in definitions you’ll likely find is that they’re all different.
Last night I became aware that I was talking to myself and was surprised that I was doing so, more or less, literally. The part I found surprising was that I noticed that ‘present me’ was talking to ‘a past version of me’ whose belief about something was just shown to be untrue. ‘Present me’ began explaining that this is a pitfall of having beliefs and… I did not realize that ‘talking to myself’, for me, seems to entail a temporal aspect that I had not recognized before. Searching my memories, I found a number of other instances of talking to myself in which the temporal aspect was also present – and none in which it wasn’t. That doesn’t mean that I’m not experiencing selective memory; in fact, it likely doesn’t mean anything at all…but I am working on correcting some unskillful mental behaviors in myself and it may be more effective to address them in different ways if my way of talking to myself is anomalous.
So, I am curious to discover if this is a personal idiosyncrasy or a general human trend. Who are the parties involved in discussion when you talk to yourself?
Comments
Well when I talk to myself it is largely as if I am talking to the air around me… I have composed letters to my younger self though.
It is human.
It can also be Buddified/spiritualised/made use of.
https://medium.com/mindfully-speaking/listening-like-the-buddha-f71fb609a4f9
Eventually everything becomes expression/talk
A whole can be divided infinitely so I likely have yet to witness all parties involved but I'm sure they'll get their turn. Heck, even the pause between my typed sentences here are all just me having a union meeting while using the 3 gates as filter for the words.
They all get an even say because I don't really identify with any of them even as I love them all as they are a part of me. In the end, I decide what to use and what to discard.
I...Me...& Myself...like a discussion between my desires and my aversions aka the opposites in order to make a "decision" or at times just the sense doors meeting up and having a gossip...
It's an interesting topic to explore...
On the island there's a local woman who often pops into one of the local op shop who talks to her self what seems to be happening is she is thinking out loud and it is possible she is not aware that she is doing this...
She will pick up an item and say "I need one of these" then "No I don't really need one" then "But it might come in useful"...she don't talk to anyone else in the shop...
When I first came across her I thought she was talking to me...and responded, but got no reply....
We're all fearful of riding on a bus, and have the certifiable loony come and sit next to us... talking, rambling, discussing, random sentences and words that make no sense, first loud, then whispered... staccato, non-stop...
We cringe, duck down in our seat and pray the madman will pass us by... they do, choosing instead an empty place, where thy can gesture, gesticulate, point and move, without inhibition, using movements to match the words...
"Weirdo!" we think, "he's a nutter...!" All the while, forgetting the fact that if we were to verbalise our continual thoughts, we would appear just as bonkers...
sometimes it is nothing but random self babbling. Sometimes it going through the discovery and/or analysis of odd speculation and inquiry. Nothing wasted as all is a part of life and Buddhism is life.
I have this too, though not exactly in the same way.
Talking to myself is so very good for me;
I can work out all my problems and plan a strategy.
I don't have to know all the answers and there's no apology.
Talking to myself is very good for me.
When people hear you talking to yourself they say
"Who are you talking to?"
But they don't seem to realise that I'm doing what I want to do.
Speaking the way I want to speak and saying what I want to say.
And I never ever have to leave, I can always stay.
That's why talking to myself is very good for me.
Geez, I had to type that out from memory because the lyrics never made it online. It's from a record I owned as a kid called Honey On Toast.
Talking to self
Sometimes planned and directed
Sometimes random odd bits
Almost always gibberish to others
Since ear buds and other devices, no more strange looks and large detours by others.