Thought’s full scope

On the individualist notion that "no one is thinking of you", and what fandom's flawed devotion can teach us about full-body consideration.

No one is thinking of you.

This is the refrain I keep seeing shared on social media. A person speaking right to the camera: buoyant, assertive, as if they are delivering a revelation. And in the way it’s presented, it is. A prompt meant to free you from the invisible shackles of other people’s thoughts and more specifically, their implied judgements.

The sooner you accept no one is thinking of you, the sooner you can get on with your life.

We’re in an era of individualism. Of thinking first and best of yourself. Pair that with another of our contemporary modes, optimization, and you get the idea that it’s bad, limiting, unproductive, to be thought of and by extension, to be thinking of other people.

There’s a coldness to this mode. Less a shoring up of self than assurance, or express permission, to be selfish. To not think of others can veer, quickly, into the territory of not considering them — whether at an individual level, or in a group — and from lack of consideration into detachment. At first, detachment skews apathetic but the more we consider something unknown the more we move to convince ourselves that it’s unknowable, a different sort of distinction. From there springs fear, then hostility.

A cursory glance at the headlines, a quick scroll, and you can understand why this mindset is thriving. Such ripe conditions to flourish.

Important to remember that the alternative to this oppressive form of self-regard, opposite selfishness, apathy, hostility, there’s the expansiveness and generosity of consideration. To consider, to be considered.

The warmth of indulging in the deep contours of thought about the people we care for. Like a small devotion, a portable shrine we carry around in our chests, and fixed in this soft wash of light are faces, gestures, memories that drift like incense smoke. It’s more difficult to trust in the divinity of other people than the concept of an all-encompassing, benevolent if mysterious god, given that we spend our waking lives with people. We’re well-acquainted with their faults because they are, likely, our own. But the inherent difficulty in placing and finding trust in other people, how the exercise exposes us at nearly every turn, I think of as a more worthwhile way to pray. To reach toward softness, expansiveness, to think of others as not only a service to ourselves but a basic pleasure of being alive.

And haven’t you noticed the lift you get, the tingling that runs from head to toe, when you receive a message or a call out of the blue that somebody was thinking of you? If we weren’t meant to be thought of, then why is it one of the very best feelings there is, to know that you’ve formed up in someone’s head and they held you there, for however long, considering you.

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Fandom, at its bedrock, is thought — pronounced, intense, one-way.

The passive focus of thought centred on another person, a stranger. The wondering, the hope, the worry, all the ways in which we pin feeling and speculation upon the drifting composite of an athlete, drummed up in our minds. We are thinking of them. Thinking of them without the hope or notion that they are thinking of us, that there is any hope of “return” to the exercise. This investment of precious mental energy.

We are happy to drift and to daydream, gnaw on mental exercises in frustration and fantasy, spend our time indulgently on the machinations of another person down to the tiniest detail of their body — the muscle, bone, the function of both in concert.

If it were ever the case to know that we were, somehow, being thought of in turn, the blind one-way attention would falter, drop off. That is the pleasure, whether romantic daydream or the completely unromantic calculations of somebody’s contract, that consideration brings.

How many times have I thought of Russell Westbrook, grinning and furious, Tasmanian Devil of the half-court?

Better still, how many times have I thought of the specific rush of forced air between Westbrook’s teeth when he lifts for a dunk, slams the ball down into soft mesh turned violent wormhole?

The pitch of his breath as it drops over the flat wall of his front teeth, sudden sensation of cold on enamel. White of his eyes, rolling under 2,000 LUX arena lighting; the vault of his stride as he leaps from the stationary bike set up in the tunnel and goes bounding to the floor.

The care in which he puts on his street clothes after a game, how they drape and where, hands smoothing down the fabric, fastening buttons, slipping the pin of a jacket zipper into the slider, tugging up, careful nothing catches. His attention, infinite. Thought’s full scope.

Fandom offers one of purest form of attention, or directing thought toward someone (the athlete) or something (a team) other than one’s self with no provisions. Even winning, or sustained success, isn’t a prerequisite. The focus of thought is so free, so excessive at times as to be worrying.

Can you imagine telling Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Nikola Jokic, LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard, that no one is thinking of them?