The Speed of the mind

I often go walking on Hampstead Heath I find it meditative and that my best ideas and musings come from being out in the open under a big sky.  My mind slows of all the buzzing allowing interesting thoughts to emerge

I sometimes walk to the shops at South End Green.   As I walked there the other day, I passed a well-known coffee shop.  As it was a sunny day, there were people outside, including a mother and a small child in a push chair.  The small child was grasping a coffee cup with the logo of the store on and putting it to his mouth.

Wow did my mind race:  first reaction was ‘oh how sweet’, then ‘ gosh getting into brands early’, then ‘actually that is slightly horrifying being ‘hooked’ so early’ (whether on brands or coffee!).  If I come down from Peter Senge’s Ladder of Abstraction, it may have been an empty cup, it may have had milk, or juice or water and be perfectly innocent.  It was the juxtaposition of cup and child and then the STORY that I told myself and made up about it that fascinated me.  Many stories to be made from that one quick glance.  Stories are created in the mind of the listener as much as the teller and the detail of what was in the cup crucial.