Heads up

I recently visited India. Most of our time was spent in Goa, must of it on the beaches. Some were empty, others crowded. It was interesting to watch how differently people walked. Nationality seemed to have more of a bearing than age. There were a lot of hawkers, selling everything from fruit, to lengths of cloth, to jewelry. The fruit sellers carried large containers that must have weighed ten or more kilos on their heads. Many of the cloth sellers had their wares bundled up on their heads too. I even saw a couple of jewellery merchants whose small pouches were perched on their heads. Away from the beaches, I saw workers carrying locally constructed breezeblocks, lengths of wood, etc, on their heads. Nine tenths of the head carriers were women. No matter what the weight â€“ and in the case of the fruit sellers, potential buyers often helped them get their load back on their heads after they had sold, or failed to sell, something to them, as it was too heavy for the sellers to do this themselves â€“ these loads were carried with apparent grace and ease. Having a weight on the head that is liable to fall off if the head is moved in certain ways seemed to bring about an enforced poise that had no connotations of stiffness or stuckness. I noticed how active the eyes of the carriers were. On the beaches, a hawker could spot a likely customer and make a beeline for them from huge distances away. Their heads would follow their eyes. The hawkers were mostly women. When they walked without their loads, they looked very similar. Upright, with little head movement. The men were not so elegant. They tended to carry things on their shoulders, if they carried anything at all. But their heads were held relatively easily. There were many Westerners around, walking the seaâ€™s edge like troopers. Almost to a man, and woman, their heads were bowed, if not all the time, more often than not. There was no way they could have walked like this and carried anything at all, apart from a firmly wedged hat, on their heads without it dropping off. I felt I knew this head drooping position well. My father adopted it in later life, and Iâ€™ve noticed myself doing the same. It seems to me to coincide with a particular form of thinking. Pondering, I would call it. Itâ€™s when the mind is grappling with an idea, turning it this way and that, trying to clarify a muddle. Thatâ€™s when I look down at the ground, not focusing on it, but in a sort of visual daze. Most of the Westerners walking by with their heads down were presumably lost in thought. I did a little experimenting and came to the conclusion that it wasnâ€™t possible to be lost in thought while looking out at the world in the way you pretty much had to do when carrying a weight on the head that prevented the head from sagging downwards; and that, in fact, in order to become fully and deeply immersed in thought, a collapse of the head on the spine was something of a necessity. My wife and I played around with this as we walked about the place. We â€˜pretendedâ€™ we were carrying weights on our heads. We did this for maybe thirty seconds at a time before we forgot about it until we remembered again and it was positively scary to watch the difference (I watched the difference in my wife, and â€˜feltâ€™ it in myself) as we went from shambling along in our usual fashion, with head wobbling or lolling or dropping, to walking with head carrying an imaginary weight. Why do we â€“ Westerners â€“ spend so much time â€˜lost in thoughtâ€™? Iâ€™m convinced it â€“ distraction – is the prime cause of poor use, and that we overindulge grotesquely. I realize that without the ability to think abstractly we wouldnâ€™t have much of a Western way of life. Maybe spending so much time â€˜in our headsâ€™ is the reason for wanting to â€˜get out ofâ€™ them so much.

2 thoughts on “Heads up

  1. Hi Nicholas,
    I enjoyed reading your blog about your visit to Goa and the good use the
    hawkers seem to have. I wonder if this good use arises from a greater
    unity of thought and action. There is no superfluous thinking or ruminating. In so much of the West people are addicted to living in their heads. Thinking and ruminating for it’s own sake, divorced from any real consequences. I am coming to feel more and more that good use involves a greater simplicity and honesty in one’s life. Becoming more attuned to one’s real needs and living in more synch with those real needs. Really taking care of and inhabiting the present moment. The phrase holy simplicity comes to mind.
    Maybe a crucial element in non end-gaining is more fully experiencing the richness and quality of the present moment.


  2. Hello Peter,

    Personally, I believe it all boils down to a division in the process
    of thinking. It’s not so much between thinking and not thinking –
    although not thinking is useful – as between ‘thinking of’ and
    ‘thinking about’. I suspect the amount of time humans spend ‘thinking
    about’ as opposed to ‘thinking of’ is in direct proportion to their
    poor use.

    If you want to know what I mean by ‘thinking of’ and ‘thinking about’,
    check here:



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