Inspired by an old topic from 2021 on here: https://tild.es/uti
How do you think?
Have you ever thought about how you think?

Do you have a voice in your head? Is it your own voice? Do you think in visuals? How strong are the visuals?

Let's have a conversation about it. We all think differently!

As an exercise, if I asked you to sit down and solve a cross word in silence, how would you think it through?

Edit: thanks for all the very interesting and very insightful replies! I've been reading them today and I really appreciate everyone's input.

I've been wrestling with my own sense of identity recently and would love to hear what part culture/identity/place plays in your lives.

This all kicked off while I was watching Stanley Tucci's Searching for Italy. In it, Stanley spends an episode in a different Italian state experiencing the local culture and cuisine. It struck me how deep the history, lore, and identity were in every aspect of their lives. It seemed even the young adults who headed off to Rome to establish their careers were expected to eventually in the small postcardesque cities and villages they were born in. It seemed like the people had an incredibly strong sense of identity and place. 

I have many friends who fall into this category. They come from towns, cities, or even countries drenched in culture and identity. And as we have started to reach the "nesting" period of our lives, many are returning to raise their children in a similar setting. As I think about my own future and those of imaginary children, I find myself jealous. My solidly suburban upbringing in a career focused, transient area means there isn't much that I can think of as a personal culture. Maybe as much as a strip mall, In-and-Out, or cul-de-sac can.

I'm wondering what my fellow tilderinos experience is like. Is there a particular place you feel at home, either from your heritage or of your own making? Are there pieces of your cuisine, culture, or lore that you would share? I know we have quite a diverse crowd here and it would be fantastic to hear about your community.

This thread is inspired by an off-topic discussion in another thread that was so interesting that I wanted to make a whole post about it. I've often seen people on the net express surprise that others have different modes of thought, typically with statements like "It was surprising to learn that others do/don't have an internal monologue!", where the do/don't choice depends on the person. I've thought for a while that a lot of this confusion might arise from people interpreting "Internal monologue" differently, and that people might actually think more similarly that it appears at first glance. My attempt to explain this in that thread was:

For example, I certainly do not vocalize all of my thoughts and it seems like my speed of thought goes much faster than the amount of time it would take to vocalize every single thing going through my head. That being said, once I concentrate on what I am thinking about, there is definitely a vocal component. If I think about going downstairs to get a snack, my thoughts are non-vocal, but once I think about the fact I am thinking about going to get a snack, I impose a narrative that has some type of vocal quality to it - I will think, I believe in words, that my thought was "I am going to go get a snack". I suspect in discussions like this a lot of people perhaps conflate the thought with the thought about the thought, since the latter is necessary to convey what one is thinking about and (at least in my case) has some type of narrative element.

So I am curious, Tildes - can you explain how you think, preferably both in moments where you are not actively thinking about thinking and those where you are?

It feels so strange. I am right here in time. Not in the past, when I screwed up some stuff. Not in the future when I'll be living somehow, whether like a good adult or somehow else. It just feels strange to be so aware of it. So aware of the moment, of the fact that I am currently typing stuff into a textbox on a website, hoping someone else relates to this feeling.

How I narrate my life has a lot to do with how I feel in the present. Bad things happened to me and I have done bad things. But there has been good people and good things also, and by forgetting them and only remembering the pain, I do a disservice not only to them, but to myself and my own wellbeing. I have been changing my story, not because the old narration is not true, but because it omits. It was not intentional omission, I just couldn’t remember. So

I want to tell the story about a boyfriend I once had named Jack. Jack was a huffer, he huffed paint, and you could always tell what color spray paint was on sale, by the color of the ring around his lips. I believe Jack loved me. He was older than me by about a decade, and I was young, but emotionally I think we were the same age. At the time of my relationship with Jack, I was a ward of the state and moved in and out of foster homes, behavioral modification centers, juvenile hall, and state mental hospitals.

I want to tell this story about Jack not only because he is most certainly dead, and tenderness and epic feats should be remembered, but also because there is never a place for me to speak about Jack.

So Jack loved me. When I was struggling with my sexuality and claimed that I only had sex with him and with men because they were easy, he stopped touching me, and allowed me to use his place to explore girls I liked. He would make them feel at home, make food, and leave to do something else elsewhere. He would never participate in a threesome when girlfriends and I were tripping our asses off, or drunk or high on something else, instead he’d go to a corner and huff paint and leave the world for a bit. When a john beat the crap out of me, and I wouldn’t go to the hospital because I was afraid of being arrested, he stitched me and set bone, all while cheerfully talking about how we would murder the bastard. In recovery we made elaborate plans for execution and giggled, and snuggled, and listened to music and had gentle sex, because I like girls, but I am not really gay.

Jack was also a planner. And not only could he make a conversation about plans to murder some deserving asshole, he could also devise and follow through on plans on how to bust me out of my various incarcerations. Most of them failed, and one cost him his own incarceration, but he had some successes. When I would be incarcerated, Jack would go to libraries and planning offices and find architectural and electrical plans for the buildings I resided in. We had this coded language we used in our letter writing where I could let him know where exactly I was located inside the building and he could let me know how far into a plan he was without a censor being able to casually figure out what was going on.

And Jack succeeded. Power went out, and I crept down stairs without alarm, and we met in bushes, and we moved through yards, and made our way to bus stops and subways until we were safe, and far, and naked, to talk and laugh, to tell the story, and have or not have sex. And then he would go to the corner and huff and fall away from the world. And I would go out into the night to make a buck.

Jack made it his mission to keep me from being locked up. He would pretend to be the brother or uncle to gain entry, to find weaknesses and to exploit, constantly on the lookout to find ways to extract my freedom, almost like he understood that I was locked up not because there was something inherently wrong with me, but that there was something wrong with the system that could not be bothered to parent the child who they had authority over. Me drugged on Thorazine, Jack carrying me down an elevator through a front door towards freedom, a quick puff at the parking lot, a friend waiting in a car around the corner, laying zoned out together, looking at Jack with his mouth stained blue. Grateful.

He had a horror story of his own that he never foisted on anyone. He also had once been a child of the state. And paint and other inhalants completely annihilated his pain. But he loved me, and paused his own decline to show me acceptance and love and tenderness. I could rest.

Jack’s name is not Jack. His name was Bill Pfeiffer. And it has been easy in my life to tell my story that no one loved me, that no one believed in me, that no one ever let me breathe. But Bill Pfeiffer did. And as the narration of my life changes, and I focus more on what I have had instead of what I did not have, Bill once again comes to free me.