How to Satisfy Your Mind
A feeling I am all too familiar with is the sense of slothfulness after my mind has been engaged for a period of time. The reason for this is because I have been engaged in worthless things. It is tempting to sit down and enjoy easy content after a long day. My mind ingests something that helps me unwind but I’m never satisfied.
The mind only survives off of one food source: ideas. Like the body, when the mind is not fed with good food, it begins to decay. When your body is not properly fed, your mind is affected: you become irritable and grouchy; your body was made to consume food. The same is true for your mind. Without the consumption of ideas your mind suffers.
But you just can’t take in anything and everything. You must be wise. Just because your body needs food doesn’t mean that you mindlessly eat. You must eat intentionally. The same is true for your mind on a lazy Saturday. As Charlotte Mason said that “mere information is to it as a meal of sawdust to the body”. Be careful that you do not consume fodder over a nutritious diet of ideas.
Then the only option that remains for you is consuming good, whole ideas that are complete with the nutrients to nourish you. Your mind will be satisfied with a wide array of ideas coming from books, music, art, and nature. When it is has had an exquisite meal, it will no longer rummage through the pantry looking for junk foods. The choicest foods for your mind are easily accessible. Why go for the cheap when you can go for the best?
But be warned: when you consume ideas, you must be ready to act. Just like the natural body, the mind will become fat if you do not burn ideas as fuel. They are not chocolate chip cookies you eat and then proceed to sit on the couch. Ideas are to drive you. I hate intellectuals and those who enjoy ideas but never act. To me they are fat snobs who only eat, unrestrained, and never exercise, and turn their noses up at you for taking care of yourself. If you never act on your ideas, you will only ever have a fat mind. Think, then act!
“Get action. Do things; be sane; don't fritter away your time; create, act, take a place wherever you are and be somebody; get action.”
- Theodore Roosevelt
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