“A penny for your thoughts?” This oft said statement comes to mind whenever you’re alone.
It simply means, “you’ve been awfully quiet” for a time, that someone’s bound to disturb your reverie or contemplation.
It’s what is. Introspection often happens to us. Our heads, er, our thoughts, seem detached from our bodies and our faces showing our minds walking a pilgrimage.
Sometimes, when alone, we take to contemplating human nature and, some minds there are, even in early part of life, receive from contemplation of nature a delight which they would hardly exchange for any other.
For those who often are engrossed in detached thoughts, well, with equal rapture, you can exclaim, “You care not, Fortune, what you deny me; can’t rob me of free nature’s grace. You can’t bar my constant mind to trace; the happiness skipping on my face.”
At least, your detached thought, or visionary thought of mind (others would call it) doesn’t incline you to practice poetry – or even painting.
For we need not scruple to confirm that, with detached thinking, no person ever became a true poet or painter.
On the other, detached thought may border on divine benevolence or, who we really are. And pondering may inflict contrariness to thought.
It happened to Ah Kong. Last week, he pondered on divine benevolence, and got confused all the more. Ah thought when God created humans, God either wished humans happiness, misery or both.
See! What detached thoughts can sometimes do to a mind already gone loco?
Yet, we come back to normal sense that since the Almighty had summoned forth his consummate wisdom and contrived to provide for our happiness, the world being constituted for this design at best, and so long as this constitution is upheld by Him, we must in reason suppose the same design to flourish.
Just saying, detached contemplation sometimes bewilders the mind than affects it.
When one gets into habit of detached thinking, one is admonished, “Hoy! Anya ti panpanunutem dita nga agmaymaysa,ah? Apay adda napukaw mo?”
But before Ah pretends to make free with other people’s heads, it’s proper to say something upon his head, presuming there’s anything at all in his head – numbskull that he is.
After many experiments of detached thoughts, and Ah finding he couldn’t make anything of his head, now takes liberty to try what he could do, by exhibiting a collection of heads belonging to other people.
These collection of heads are: of nanang, tatang, lola, lolo, mannuro, nasayaat nga politician, abugado, mannalon, enginero, pade, pulis, soldado, doktor, nurse, midwife, karpentero, drayber, businessman/businesswoman, taga lako, housewife, entrepreneur, serbidora, kamanero, kabitero, gardinero, mason, peon, taga sagad ti kalsada, OFW, dadumma a gobierno ken pribado nga empleado, retirado, estudyante, the young, the old, the enfeebled, the infirm, other daily laborer, etc.
Ah confesses he has more than once wished these kinds of heads were on his own shoulders, but Ah’s very poor abilities to duplicate these heads bring a blush to the cheeks.
For into the heads mentioned, Genius erected a temple of originality of each person, where observation and fancy reside, and from this union numerous and whimsical descendants.
These heads, known and long respected, universally acknowledged, can give peculiar grace to the jest and could set the table on a roar with flashes of wit and merriment, or sober thinking.
These heads can possess a keenness of satire, that can make Foolishness dive under the table and hide its head.
These heads can sometime be easygoing, indulgent, yet hold even their own misfortune with detached amusement, or sober introspection.
These heads, are people who rise in the morning, look the world in the face and tell, in front of the mirror, “Ayna nagpintas nak/nag-gwapo nak. Bay-bay-am nu saan mammati ni asawak/gayyem ko; tse na ket di ah, nu didda mamati ti kinapintas /kina-gwapok.”
Or, they say, “Ayna, sarming, saanak pay nga lumaklakay/bumakbaket.”
Or, they polish the mirror and whisper to it, “Agasem, adda pay nabatbati nga bo-ok ti ulok.”
They do these in a quiet and good-humored fashion.
Language of these people take on character of the land. Undeterred and resourceful, they best express their thoughts with truth, comparison, or to say the least, exaggeration, and have developed a vernacular common in their occupation, while filled with reference to the familiar things of their lives.
But thinking detachedly on the coin’s flipside, there are other heads, like Ah’s, which are between the shoulders, and sad to observe, are merely for decoration, to wear a hat on, put a wig on a bald, or for a barber to do haircut.
Among multitude of odd characters abounding Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) and Region 1, one can headstrongly contemplate that there are generous heads, honest heads, down-to-earth heads and some devilish clever heads.
No wonder, even to a greatest wonderer, nobody in his/her right mind, entertains, with detached thought, of entertaining dream of having somebody’s head as his/her own.
If that somebody’s head is of devilish clever kind, would you covet it? Criminal minds may do. But, you say, Daily Laborers aren’t of that kind to covet a devilish head.
Are detached thoughts good for us? Very definitely yes, say scientists, explaining it’s attentive thinking, consists of suspending thoughts, leaving it detached, empty, ready to be penetrated by the object that is to penetrate it, within reach of the thought.
There, we have it. Detached thinking is somber thinking, not moping around as parents whine. Sometimes, it’s common, of the act of talking, but not thinking. Better not talking but thinking, in talking.
For, as old folks observe, from seven years old, we go to school to be taught. From twenty to thirty, we are very apt to use that learning.
From thirty to forty, we settle. From forty to sixty, we think away as fast as we can. From fifty to sixty, we’re careful in our accounts. From sixty to seventy, we cast up what all our thinking comes to.
Between gains and losses, enjoyment and inquietude, even with addition of old age, we can strike the balance. Meaning, for all years from seven to seventy, we have had bouts of detached and solitude thoughts.
Still, our cynic’s side whisper, detached thoughts are numbers of nothing. True. Yet, they are wall’s handwritings, part of us, we be highlanders or lowlanders.
For in life, like arithmetic, there are detached thoughts, which, like cyphers, mean nothing in themselves, seemingly insignificant; yet, by addition of a single digit, assume rank and value in an instant.
The implication? Detached thoughts maybe gained into something good by the single power of a Cordilleran or lowlander who is master of his/her head and thoughts.
Still, the laughing thought in us bedevil, asking, “But if our gains come from nothing, we may suppose our thoughts will come to nothing?”
Aah, dear fellow Daily Laborer, happy are we who, amidst variations of nothing, have no thoughts to fear. If we have nothing to lose, we have no thoughts to lament.
And, if we have done nothing to be ashamed of, upon your oath, you have everything to think and hope, thanking the One without Beginning and End and your ancestors, that, at least, in a world of topsy-turvy, ay, caramba, we still have undetached head, with detached wit.
