Word: cogitation

            

cogitation

\ koj-i-TEY-shuhn \  , noun;

1. concerted thought or reflection; meditation; contemplation: After hours of cogitation he came up with a new proposal .

2. the faculty of thinking: She was a serious student and had a great power of cogitation .

3. a thought; design or plan: to jot down one's cogitations .

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    Jack opened his eyes.  In front of him was…nothing.  Just a blank, white space that didn’t seem to have any walls, or even a real floor.  In fact, it felt like he wasn’t really standing on anything in particular.  He was standing on something, he could feel his feet were being supported by something.  He just couldn’t see what. 

                He looked around at the empty area and wondered how he had gotten there.  What was he doing again?  There was a guy who had given him something to drink.  What was that about again?  He couldn’t remember.  It was something important though.  At least, he thought it was.  It had to be. 

                Jack’s thoughts were interrupted by sudden movement.  A small bird was flying around his head. Jack was compelled to hold out his hand to the animal.  It was a small, bland little woodpecker that ended up sitting on his outstretched fingers.  Jack and the bird looked at each other for a moment. The bird was the first to move.  It’s sharp little beak rapped against Jack’s forehead in quick succession.  He yelped and flicked the bird off.  It seemed to just disappear.

                Jack nursed the place where the woodpecker attacked him.  As he did, his feet started moving of their own accord.  He didn’t let that bother him, and opted to simply keep walking.  He tried to remember what he was doing in the vast, empty space.  The man had something to do with it.  Was he Chinese or something?  He looked Chinese.  But it could have been Japanese for all Jack knew.  And the drink.  Some kind of tea, right?  Yeah, it was definitely tea.  Why had he drunken it again?

                His thoughts were once again interrupted, this time by a person.  It was a girl, and one Jack recognized right away.  It was his ex-girlfriend, Lisa.  They had been dating for about six months when she dumped him.  He had thought they were getting along pretty well, but apparently, she thought otherwise.  Why had she dumped him again?  Oh, right.  She said he was too shallow.  It wasn’t that he only looked at a girl’s appearance, it was that he never had a deep thought in his life.  That all his ideas were simple, basic things and that nothing he did had any real depth to it.  She had even gone as far as to say his mind was completely empty. 

                That was why he had drunken the tea!  The old Chinese man said it was something that would let even someone like him enter a deep state of meditation and contemplation.  Jack figured that was the opposite of the shallow thoughts Lisa said he had, so he had drunk it.  That meant the large, empty space he was in was some kind of representation of his mind, right?  Wow, Lisa was right.  His mind really was empty. 

                So what should he do about that?  He had no idea.  He probably should have asked the Chinese guy before drinking the tea.  Oh well, he’d just have to figure it out on his own.  That was what meditation and that stuff was for, right?  Suddenly, the hummingbird came back.  This time though, it didn’t peck at Jack.  It simply landed on his head and sat there.  Was that supposed to happen?  Jack thought about that for a moment.  He figured it was and decided to just go with it.  He’d figure something out if he thought about it long enough.

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Not everyone has deep thoughts.  That's probably a good thing though.  If everyone was deep thinkers, nothing would get done.  But, on the other hand, it's equally bad if nobody every has any deep thoughts.  A nice balance between deep and shallow thoughts is best.  Really, that goes for all things, doesn't it?