The Undomesticated Animal

The last animal you will ever see domesticated is: your mind. I know it from my experience.

Just try a simple experiment. Sit in a comfortable chair, away from all distractions. Shut off your television, silence your phone, close the door and even the windows if you like. Think of any one subject. Can you do so for five minutes, without your mind straying once? For two minutes?
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All your years in school, college and university have been in vain and all your years learning to swim, cycle, master this art or that science, have gone to waste if you can’t even discipline your own mind for two minutes. You can’t control what the Buddhists call your ‘monkey mind.’ It just keeps jumping from point to point, irresistibly and irresponsibly, and it seem you can do little about it. Your most important asset, your mind, you can’t restrain. Like a frisky animal, it is an undisciplined, purposeless force. When you think you have worked on a task or an idea for an hour, at least a half, possibly two-thirds, of that time your mind has been moonlighting on other distracting ideas.

Many years ago, Tetris, the computer game became a rage. Everybody played the game. I came late to the game and scored much less than anybody I knew, especially my secretary. I practiced a lot and steadily improved my score. After a while I seemed to have reached a plateau, where my score stayed put no matter how hard I tried. Two weeks later I broke out of that level and my score rose again, though slowly, until I again reached a plateau. Another plateau or two later, when my score seemed perennially stuck, I decided to try a different track. I went to bed early, slept well, got up early, shaved, showered, meditated for a half-hour, then, calmly, sat down to play. I scored better than ever before, much better.
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What made the difference, I asked myself. The answer was obvious. My mind was in a better place, calm and collected. My skill or will was no greater than before, but my mind was better able to guide my proficiency to a higher score. 

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I don’t play Tetris any more, but the lesson stayed with me. I took to playing Sudoku puzzles, a game of logic that is sometimes mistaken for a mathematical game. It is certainly a more contemplative diversion, requiring no nimble finger play or hasty attention to tumbling blocks. I love the divine simplicity of the game and the devilish complexity of mastering it. I can play it sitting at my desk, or I can play it lying in my bed. I can play it in books, magazines and newspapers, with pencils and erasures, or – needless to say it these days – I can play it on my computer or tablet.

The game involves the application of two brutally basic principles, those of inclusion and exclusion. You include a number in a given cell if the other numbers in the row, column or segment require its inclusion because it is not there. On the other hand, you exclude a number from a given cell, if the other numbers do not allow it, for the simple reason that the number is already used. Yet in applying these two simple principles, you occasionally find yourself sweating, cerebrally and metaphorically of course, and cursing yourself for engaging in a masochistic time-killer.
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Since I seldom have time to engage in the diversion during the day, I find myself Sudoku-embattled usually close to the midnight hour. The result is that, given a difficult puzzle, I often have to leave it half-solved – half-puzzled over what the next step ought to be. The miracle is that, when I resume after a gap of several hours, often a day, more often than not I immediately spy an opening. I find the opening so quickly and easily that I cannot help ask the question: Why do I see a breach now that I didn’t see earlier? What changed and for what reason?

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The truth is that patience, persistence and pertinacity – qualities that we have been asked to develop from our childhood and that go so well with the quality of obedience that our elders so valued – work only up to a point. Beyond that point, it is like battering your head against a wall. Then it is better to walk back and try from a different angle. We are creatures of circumstance as well as success. What worked for us once we cannot let go and persist in, no matter the prospect. A temporary withdrawal is not an abject abdication, but a strategic regress, to review, rethink and return with a better perspective. Even when we don’t consciously cogitate on a topic, the very act of stepping back provides a new perspective. It helps us come back with a fresh point of view.
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Even if it is only to return to the dubious, masochistic joy of the next Sudoku.