Ever since I learned to cook, I’ve always found the process of
cooking kind of relaxing. I could compare it to what one might feel while
running: your body’s on full alert and in full motion but your brain gets a
chance to disconnect itself for a little bit and do some major shuffling and
re-shelving of ideas. You get a chance to look at your actions, no matter the
past, present or future, and employ objective rather than subjective judgment.
One of the things I have missed the most while living in the
dorms was having my own kitchen. Before college, kitchen was a place to which I
could come exhausted from school and work and troubled with the day’s
interactions but from which in a matter of an hour I could leave refreshed. And
it had nothing to do with food at all. Perhaps my rather conservative upbringing
has influenced me more than I realize, but the times I’ve felt clear-headed and
impartial enough to make the most important decisions had something to do with
me cleaning, sorting, and cooking things, and, in some cases, running long distances.
All of these activities made me busy just enough to think in terms of facts and
logic but not deep enough to think about feelings, so in a way, this prevented
emotions from interfering with my decision-making.
What if, on some subconscious level, mechanical-type physical
activity encourages not just any
stress-free thinking but a specific
mental process that corresponds directly to a certain task at hand, which, in
case with cleaning the house, for example, would unintentionally be cleaning
our mind of unnecessary and irrelevant factors, so to speak? If this were true,
then it would make sense that the process of sorting physical items would lead
us to sort ideas into categories in our heads, therefore making conclusions
easier to reach. Cooking food could be envisioned as a process of putting together
right amounts of ingredients to create a dish to serve one’s tastes – relating
to how we take into account as many factors as possible when reaching
resolutions and compromises. Distance-running, on the other hand, would be responsible
for our mind’s ability to not only carefully select routes but also develop
patience and endurance when having come across obstacles and rough patches in
life through which there is no other choice but to “run through”. Though the
connections drawn above are only hypothetical, I can’t help but wonder how much
of the physical activity we think we complete with a certain degree of
automaticity, such as walking, driving, folding laundry or putting on make-up, might
have more influence on our minds than we realize?
