How do you see?

More often than not, we struggle to communicate effectively. With others yes, but also with ourselves. It takes more than a few moments of revelation to realise the fully-formed idea that has been floating in and out of our minds before we spell it out in words.

The process of generating our own mental copies of experiences, thoughts, and ideas might be organic and unique - depending on each situation. However, what if there is a secret recipe to how we can arrive at the complete picture? Perhaps there is a common route for our individual minds, to create this end scenario where we are the authors of a beautiful masterpiece.

Seeing, the visual action of one of our five senses, is what we generally talk about. Here I would like to focus on how our brains 'see' concepts - just as much like an image. How a series of words instil a mental picture painted not by the visual cortex, but by grey matter. This is a skill - some might say, that this is an art - that first creates a muscle and then uses it further to develop that organ. When you see the phrase 'abstract thinking' in one's resume, this is exactly what they are talking about.

Being a physics student in my Bachelor's, when we first came across the Introduction to Quantum Mechanics course in our second year, it was usual to complain to our peers how many times we had to read a paragraph of David J. Griffiths's book to understand a given concept. Imagine doing this for all the twelve chapters of the book. It has no problem taking over 10,000 hours to just understand what is actually being said.

Now that we have had a couple of summer weeks to process the Oppenheimer movie by Nolan, I would suggest the ones who watched think about how the director showed us images of huddled particles in obscure lighting in Oppenheimer's mind when he was understanding and thinking about wave functions of particles. The art of mentally visualizing a concept aka abstract thinking is a powerful tool used by many who earn their living by using their minds.

If we look beyond what is required at our jobs, this way of thinking can hugely boost our social skills and attain serenity in most situations. Seeing beyond what is visible, enhances our empathy and enables us to connect with each other. Think about the person at work or in your social circles, with whom you feel seen and heard - that person probably is able to see beyond. Often people who do not necessarily think abstractly or form mental images of ideas can also make others feel or heard - that is usually when they have been through similar situations or have shared equivalent experiences.

Abstract thinking is something that we do every day, to varying degrees. The important thing here is to realize that this is important for our inner self that would project not only in how we build our careers but also reflect in our creative selves and our social network. There are many ways to start if you think that this is something that you have not thought about before. You can start with your favourite pick - the colour wheel is a good place to begin. Think about how one colour slowly spreads out to change the tone, and hue ultimately giving rise to a completely new colour. This is a great exercise as when you are done thinking about this, you can have a look at a colour wheel as it exists physically. Slowly try to use this method to think about and imagine more abstract concepts that have no physical counterpart that you can see, such as an atom.

One of my earliest memories of abstract thinking is the number line - how I started learning numbers, and how it had a starting point at '0'. When I learnt about negative numbers, how instead of an end at '0', the line stretched into infinity on the other side again and when I would think of a number, it would seem to me magnified compared to its neighbours who blur into infinity with distance from me, they are blurry but they are always there.

You would also find that conversations that transcend beyond what is visible often move us the most and we find it enriching and very rewarding. This is an experience that sort of pierces our cores and yet, is not so much unlocked in the global context. I hope that you start practising this art and let it build an enriching inner life for you.

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