6 ms·

This is fascinating to me. People are often surprised that I don't listen to music when I drive. I'll do road-trips of 3 and 4 days in length where I won't list

by all2 4y ago

This is fascinating to me. People are often surprised that I don't listen to music when I drive. I'll do road-trips of 3 and 4 days in length where I won't listen to anything at all; just me and my thoughts and emotions. I call it "asphalt therapy". I wonder if this has to do with the avoidant nature of the human mind? Most folks I know don't tend to want to deal with their emotions. They'd rather cover their emotional condition with something. Sometimes that is music. (I'm not saying this is the only reason people will listen to music, just that it is a pet theory of mine.)

bityard 4y ago
I do this too. I find that if I don't occasionally stop and listen to my brain (sometimes for extended periods of time), I find out later that it was trying to tell me something important and I was too busy to listen.
- eurasiantiger 4y ago
  That is meditation.
  - psychphysic 4y ago
    I think the overlap between meditation and reflection is significant but hardly total. Listening to your mind is reflection, but meditation usually involves broader mental activities including ignoring your transient thoughts and focusing thoughts.
    - haswell 4y ago
      Mindfulness meditation involves the opposite of ignoring thoughts, and instead trains you to be aware of each thought as it comes and goes but to avoid identifying with it or getting lost in the thought. Ignoring/suppressing thought is one of the biggest misconceptions many people have when first going into mindfulness practice, myself included. There are other forms of meditation/concentration practice, but the practice recognized to be widely beneficial is Mindfulness/Vipassana/“Seeing things as they are”.
      - mcbuilder 4y ago
        Yeah I grew up doing Transcendental Meditation, the instruction was that any effort was too much effort. It took me so long to grasp this concept, but eventually it clicked. It's a hard concept to convey, because lots of things can come popping up. You can even have some of your brain working overtime while you're sort of sitting outside of that and observing it, so it's like your effortlessly observing your effort if that makes sense, eventually that brain will shut up but only if you leave it alone. :)
      - psychphysic 4y ago
        > There are other forms of meditation/concentration practice, but the practice recognized to be widely beneficial is Mindfulness/Vipassana/“Seeing things as they are”. It's mental to me how territorial people become about this stuff! Yoga, martial arts even vegetarianism! Everyone insists everyone else is doing it wrong and they get control of what the phrase means.
        haswell 4y ago
        I definitely don’t mean to sound territorial! My comment was based on the fact that mindfulness meditation is the form that has shown the most promising positive outcomes in numerous studies and most likely to produce helpful results. My mindset was closer to what it would be if we were having a discussion about fruits and vegetables and someone extolled the virtues of eating corn and iceberg lettuce. The underlying point is that not all forms of practice have been shown to produce the effect that most people tend to look for. This isn’t to say that other approaches are invalid for their intended purpose. If your goal is to improve your health through better eating, starting with corn and iceberg lettuce might be better than some alternatives (like eating pizza every night), but nutritionists would be quick to point out that there are options that are far healthier and will give you much more value. I don’t think using other forms of meditation is doing it wrong at all. I do think choosing a path without understanding it and how it differs from other paths is less ideal, though, and for a practice that involves the investment of significant time and focus, understanding the landscape seems rather important going in. https://www.apa.org/topics/mindfulness/meditation https://www.apa.org/topics/mindfulness/meditation
  - cptaj 4y ago
    Not even that. Simply being bored... good, old fashioned bored with nothing to do, no feeds to check; a lot of us are missing this part of the human experience these days. We constantly distract ourselves and I think we're missing a crucial part of the ideation/inspiration process.
- ilyt 4y ago
  Mine just tries to convince me preparing pizza at 3AM is a great idea.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    Logic after midnight is a different kind of logic where pizza is always a good substitute answer.
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      I try pretty hard to avoid being conscious between midnight and 3AM because it rarely seems to be a happy time to live with my own thoughts. If I do it too long, I'll turn on the lights.
    - ilyt 4y ago
      You misunderstood. It's not "make some pizza" It's "prepare a bunch of dough for the pizza tomorrow, freeze half then eat pizza for next 2 days, then always having option to thaw some more pizza dough to make more pizza
      - all2 4y ago
        I like this impulse. Are you looking for a roommate?
  - mock-possum 4y ago
    The thing is, there will be a moment, shortly after 3am, when you will be consuming pizza - and that’ll be a pretty good moment. You could give yourself that moment if you wanted to, nobody is stopping you. Go ahead. Just go see what’s in the fridge. If you make some toast, put butter and garlic salt on it, slather it with spaghetti sauce, then bake cheese on top of it, is that basically pizza? What if you chopped up a bratwurst and put it on top? What if you sprinkled some of that leftover pico de gayo on top? What if you made like six of them at the same time, and put them on a baking sheet, and then when they were ready, you woke up the other people in your house so they could enjoy this pizza you made.
burnished 4y ago
I do both! I have an active imagination so sometimes it can be very pleasing to drive without music and focus on my thoughts. It can also be great to crank the radio. Different strokes for different folks is my guess on this
- pixl97 4y ago
  I tend to turn on music when driving to avoid diving too deeply into thought especially on longer trips. If my driving focus gets priority inverted with my imagination it can lead to less than safe operation of the car.
  - watwut 4y ago
    The whole idea of driving "while focusing on thoughts and imagination" makes me think drivers on roads are less safe then I assumed.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      With 20-30 thousand drivers dying on the road in the US alone each year, I'm not exactly sure how safe you thought the roads were.
    - burnished 4y ago
      I'm American, much of the driving in my life has been on interstates for hours at a time. You don't really have to be paying much attention for long stretches, just enough to be aware if something moves in an unexpected fashion. City driving does not present the same opportunity for day dreaming because there is too much going on at once, so don't worry I'm paying full attention then. Kind of have to in order to be aware of pedestrians, bicycles, other drivers, traffic signals, pot holes, and street parked cars (sometimes all at once).
      - watwut 4y ago
        > You don't really have to be paying much attention for long stretches, just enough to be aware if something moves in an unexpected fashion ... day draeming Afaik, you are supposed to keep attention in case there is crash in front of you or car in front of you abruptly stops for some reason. If you are day dreaming, you wont be able to stop. You are not supposed to be day dreaming when driving on high way. They even started to put in intentional turns so that people are forced to wake up if they lost the attention.
m3kw9 4y ago
Driving with music sucks because everyone wants a certain type of music and loudness, just shut it off
johnchristopher 4y ago
Or maybe they are at peace with their emotions and they don't need therapy and just want to listen to music ?
boringg 4y ago
Driving or long cycling rides -- really has you work out things. Also I do like listening to music in the car though.
dieselgate 4y ago
Agree with the not listening to anything part - trying to curate your own music for thy long of a time is tough, and radio stations will be changing to static with the distance. It’s just easiest to drive safe and focus on that. This is something that’s changed with me in age though
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
Honestly I was beginning to wonder if I might be the only person on earth who doesn't listen to anything while driving. Everyone seems to think it is so weird.
- smcin 4y ago
  Do you think, reflect, meditate, observe or just veg out?
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
    Think. Sometimes I talk to myself.
TeMPOraL 4y ago
> Most folks I know don't tend to want to deal with their emotions. They'd rather cover their emotional condition with something. It took me a while to admit this to myself, and even more to someone else, but at this point I'm one of those folks you describe. Not because I don't want to, or don't recognize the need to, deal with my emotions. Rather, because the last time I tried, I spent years digging deeper and deeper without making progress, and then couple more years to dig myself back up, with nothing to show for it. If there is a way to deal with the more deep-seated emotions, without getting stuck in a loop and without losing ability to function normally in a society, I'd love to know about it.
- pegasus 4y ago
  Psychedelic therapy.
- ntlk 4y ago
  This is exactly what therapy is for.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  Acceptance Commitment Therapy would tell you that the digging was just as bad as the covering up because they're both control strategies. Control strategies can work sometimes, but when they don't the result is a feedback loop of struggle. The solution is to accept (or expand) the emotion and give it space to exist without fusing with it. This will not necessarily make the emotion go away, but through practice one can keep them from steering the ship, as it were. I cannot yet speak to the efficacy of ACT, but because I had a similar relationship with my thoughts and emotions my therapist recommended a few books to me and I'm still working my way through The Happiness Trap.
- all2 4y ago
  I adhere to a fundamental faith in Jesus, and He enables me to break those emotional loops. The loops are - theoretically - foundational issues that are driven by lies that you believe about yourself or existence in general. Humans aren't really equipped to deal with those lies lodged in their hearts. God, however, can. He can replace those lies with Truth (with a capital T because a Supreme creative God is only found in an absolute reality). I'm an ideologue and I'll admit it, but my God has brought me an incredible amount of peace even in the face of a seemingly fracturing world. I can expand here or via email, if you'd like.
watwut 4y ago
For me, music in long ride helps to keep attention. So that I do not zoom out into thoughts while driving.
comfypotato 4y ago
Do you have a busy life outside of said road- trips? I find that a prescribed amount of time alone with my thoughts lets me process the things I have to think about. Once I’ve processed said things (which could take the days of your road trip during busy phases of my life) I prefer stimulation to letting the thought-patterns I’ve developed become circular upon themselves.

by all2 4y ago

bityard 4y ago

I do this too. I find that if I don't occasionally stop and listen to my brain (sometimes for extended periods of time), I find out later that it was trying to tell me something important and I was too busy to listen.

eurasiantiger 4y ago
That is meditation.
- psychphysic 4y ago
  I think the overlap between meditation and reflection is significant but hardly total. Listening to your mind is reflection, but meditation usually involves broader mental activities including ignoring your transient thoughts and focusing thoughts.
  - haswell 4y ago
    Mindfulness meditation involves the opposite of ignoring thoughts, and instead trains you to be aware of each thought as it comes and goes but to avoid identifying with it or getting lost in the thought. Ignoring/suppressing thought is one of the biggest misconceptions many people have when first going into mindfulness practice, myself included. There are other forms of meditation/concentration practice, but the practice recognized to be widely beneficial is Mindfulness/Vipassana/“Seeing things as they are”.
    - mcbuilder 4y ago
      Yeah I grew up doing Transcendental Meditation, the instruction was that any effort was too much effort. It took me so long to grasp this concept, but eventually it clicked. It's a hard concept to convey, because lots of things can come popping up. You can even have some of your brain working overtime while you're sort of sitting outside of that and observing it, so it's like your effortlessly observing your effort if that makes sense, eventually that brain will shut up but only if you leave it alone. :)
    - psychphysic 4y ago
      > There are other forms of meditation/concentration practice, but the practice recognized to be widely beneficial is Mindfulness/Vipassana/“Seeing things as they are”. It's mental to me how territorial people become about this stuff! Yoga, martial arts even vegetarianism! Everyone insists everyone else is doing it wrong and they get control of what the phrase means.
      - haswell 4y ago
        I definitely don’t mean to sound territorial! My comment was based on the fact that mindfulness meditation is the form that has shown the most promising positive outcomes in numerous studies and most likely to produce helpful results. My mindset was closer to what it would be if we were having a discussion about fruits and vegetables and someone extolled the virtues of eating corn and iceberg lettuce. The underlying point is that not all forms of practice have been shown to produce the effect that most people tend to look for. This isn’t to say that other approaches are invalid for their intended purpose. If your goal is to improve your health through better eating, starting with corn and iceberg lettuce might be better than some alternatives (like eating pizza every night), but nutritionists would be quick to point out that there are options that are far healthier and will give you much more value. I don’t think using other forms of meditation is doing it wrong at all. I do think choosing a path without understanding it and how it differs from other paths is less ideal, though, and for a practice that involves the investment of significant time and focus, understanding the landscape seems rather important going in. https://www.apa.org/topics/mindfulness/meditation https://www.apa.org/topics/mindfulness/meditation
- cptaj 4y ago
  Not even that. Simply being bored... good, old fashioned bored with nothing to do, no feeds to check; a lot of us are missing this part of the human experience these days. We constantly distract ourselves and I think we're missing a crucial part of the ideation/inspiration process.
ilyt 4y ago
Mine just tries to convince me preparing pizza at 3AM is a great idea.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  Logic after midnight is a different kind of logic where pizza is always a good substitute answer.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    I try pretty hard to avoid being conscious between midnight and 3AM because it rarely seems to be a happy time to live with my own thoughts. If I do it too long, I'll turn on the lights.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    You misunderstood. It's not "make some pizza" It's "prepare a bunch of dough for the pizza tomorrow, freeze half then eat pizza for next 2 days, then always having option to thaw some more pizza dough to make more pizza
    - all2 4y ago
      I like this impulse. Are you looking for a roommate?
- mock-possum 4y ago
  The thing is, there will be a moment, shortly after 3am, when you will be consuming pizza - and that’ll be a pretty good moment. You could give yourself that moment if you wanted to, nobody is stopping you. Go ahead. Just go see what’s in the fridge. If you make some toast, put butter and garlic salt on it, slather it with spaghetti sauce, then bake cheese on top of it, is that basically pizza? What if you chopped up a bratwurst and put it on top? What if you sprinkled some of that leftover pico de gayo on top? What if you made like six of them at the same time, and put them on a baking sheet, and then when they were ready, you woke up the other people in your house so they could enjoy this pizza you made.

burnished 4y ago

I do both! I have an active imagination so sometimes it can be very pleasing to drive without music and focus on my thoughts. It can also be great to crank the radio. Different strokes for different folks is my guess on this

pixl97 4y ago
I tend to turn on music when driving to avoid diving too deeply into thought especially on longer trips. If my driving focus gets priority inverted with my imagination it can lead to less than safe operation of the car.
- watwut 4y ago
  The whole idea of driving "while focusing on thoughts and imagination" makes me think drivers on roads are less safe then I assumed.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    With 20-30 thousand drivers dying on the road in the US alone each year, I'm not exactly sure how safe you thought the roads were.
  - burnished 4y ago
    I'm American, much of the driving in my life has been on interstates for hours at a time. You don't really have to be paying much attention for long stretches, just enough to be aware if something moves in an unexpected fashion. City driving does not present the same opportunity for day dreaming because there is too much going on at once, so don't worry I'm paying full attention then. Kind of have to in order to be aware of pedestrians, bicycles, other drivers, traffic signals, pot holes, and street parked cars (sometimes all at once).
    - watwut 4y ago
      > You don't really have to be paying much attention for long stretches, just enough to be aware if something moves in an unexpected fashion ... day draeming Afaik, you are supposed to keep attention in case there is crash in front of you or car in front of you abruptly stops for some reason. If you are day dreaming, you wont be able to stop. You are not supposed to be day dreaming when driving on high way. They even started to put in intentional turns so that people are forced to wake up if they lost the attention.

m3kw9 4y ago

Driving with music sucks because everyone wants a certain type of music and loudness, just shut it off

johnchristopher 4y ago

Or maybe they are at peace with their emotions and they don't need therapy and just want to listen to music ?

boringg 4y ago

Driving or long cycling rides -- really has you work out things. Also I do like listening to music in the car though.

dieselgate 4y ago

Agree with the not listening to anything part - trying to curate your own music for thy long of a time is tough, and radio stations will be changing to static with the distance. It’s just easiest to drive safe and focus on that. This is something that’s changed with me in age though

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago

Honestly I was beginning to wonder if I might be the only person on earth who doesn't listen to anything while driving. Everyone seems to think it is so weird.

smcin 4y ago
Do you think, reflect, meditate, observe or just veg out?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  Think. Sometimes I talk to myself.

TeMPOraL 4y ago

> Most folks I know don't tend to want to deal with their emotions. They'd rather cover their emotional condition with something. It took me a while to admit this to myself, and even more to someone else, but at this point I'm one of those folks you describe. Not because I don't want to, or don't recognize the need to, deal with my emotions. Rather, because the last time I tried, I spent years digging deeper and deeper without making progress, and then couple more years to dig myself back up, with nothing to show for it. If there is a way to deal with the more deep-seated emotions, without getting stuck in a loop and without losing ability to function normally in a society, I'd love to know about it.

pegasus 4y ago
Psychedelic therapy.
ntlk 4y ago
This is exactly what therapy is for.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
Acceptance Commitment Therapy would tell you that the digging was just as bad as the covering up because they're both control strategies. Control strategies can work sometimes, but when they don't the result is a feedback loop of struggle. The solution is to accept (or expand) the emotion and give it space to exist without fusing with it. This will not necessarily make the emotion go away, but through practice one can keep them from steering the ship, as it were. I cannot yet speak to the efficacy of ACT, but because I had a similar relationship with my thoughts and emotions my therapist recommended a few books to me and I'm still working my way through The Happiness Trap.
all2 4y ago
I adhere to a fundamental faith in Jesus, and He enables me to break those emotional loops. The loops are - theoretically - foundational issues that are driven by lies that you believe about yourself or existence in general. Humans aren't really equipped to deal with those lies lodged in their hearts. God, however, can. He can replace those lies with Truth (with a capital T because a Supreme creative God is only found in an absolute reality). I'm an ideologue and I'll admit it, but my God has brought me an incredible amount of peace even in the face of a seemingly fracturing world. I can expand here or via email, if you'd like.

watwut 4y ago

For me, music in long ride helps to keep attention. So that I do not zoom out into thoughts while driving.

comfypotato 4y ago

Do you have a busy life outside of said road- trips? I find that a prescribed amount of time alone with my thoughts lets me process the things I have to think about. Once I’ve processed said things (which could take the days of your road trip during busy phases of my life) I prefer stimulation to letting the thought-patterns I’ve developed become circular upon themselves.