Little Early-Pearly came by in her curly-wurly...

...and asked me if I needed a ride.

How much of the way we think (not what we think, the way we think) is by choice, and how much is hard-wired? I don't know, but I was thinking about it this evening.

When I'm doing cardio at the gym, I listen to my MP3 player. I set it to "Shuffle Once" mode, which means that, if it were not turned off, it would play every song I have on it one time, in some order that has nothing to do with the way I have the files arranged and organized, without repeating any song. I believe it would stop after playing each song, but I'll never know - I have more than 30 hours of music loaded in there, and I don't think I've got a battery that could play the whole player all the way through. For the record, the way that I have them arranged and organized is that (with two exceptions that have no bearing on this discussion) every artist for whom I have more than one song loaded has a folder (e.g., my Beatles song are in a folder called "The Beatles"), with a folder called "One Songers" which holds the songs which are the only one by a given artist that I have on there.

Tonight, I heard Bruce Springsteen's original version of "Blinded by the Light," (which I prefer, by the by) immediately followed by the (probably) better-known cover version by Manfred Mann's Earth Band. (Guess what song the lyrics that form the title of this post, and its continuation, are from!) My immediate thought when I heard the 2nd version start was, "Huh. What are the odds?" I followed that thought, through no conscious effort on my part mind you, by answering myself (not in these exact words), that the odds are precisely x-to-1, where x = y-z; where y = the number of songs I have on the player, and z = the number of songs that had played since I turned it on this evening, including the original version of "Blinded by the Light."

I don't dispute the content of the thought. It's correct (unless I screwed up my thinking somewhere) - each of the songs that had been played was ineligible to follow "Blinded." Each of the songs that had not yet been played had an equal (from my perspective - I don't know if there's some formula or system that determines the order of play in the shuffle modes, or if it's truly random) chance of being the next song. The fact that it was Manfred's version of "Blinded" was no more or less likely than if the next song had been "Heartbreak Hotel," "Hurts So Good," or "I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues." (See what I did there? Heartbreak, hurts, blues?) It could just as easily have been "Never Been to Spain," "Mexicali Blues," or "Back in the U.S.S.R." There was an equal chance of the next song being any one of a number of silly love songs, or "Silly Love Songs." I could go on. In fact, I did. For quite a while. Erased it. It ended with the conclusion that, if I were going to be buried instead of cremated, a fitting epitaph for my gravestone might be, "I couldn't resist the terrible pun." You're probably better off not knowing the details. Besides, I've already digressed too far from where I'm trying to be.

So... I don't dispute the thought itself. What I do question is... WHY? My internal conversation very easily could have, and I believe for most people would have, ended at "What are the odds?" Why in the world would I go on to consider the actual math (in hypothetical form, since I don't know how many songs I have on my player and was not aware of how many had already played) involved in those odds?

Obviously, in this situation, it's not a big deal. But this logical, analytical M.O. is how I tend to operate overall, and it seems to me that most of the people I encounter to not have this tendency. Most of the people around me tend to have more of a sense of wonder, uncertainty, mystery (whatever you want to call it) than I do. Things are unexplainable, unknowable. It seems to me that most people tend to take most things at face value - it is what it is, and if they don't get it... well, it's just one of those things. I've never been much of a tinkerer, but I seem to with thoughts what they do with things - take them apart to see what they're made of, then put them back together to be sure I know how they work. Or something like that.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, or a problem of any kind. I mean, my little Springsteen math problem was a perfectly logical thought. But where do I get this tendency to, without conscious thought or effort, immediately analyze this way, to deconstruct and reconstruct so that the reassembly turns my "Hmmm" into an "Ahhhh"?

I don't recall ever making a conscious choice to think this way. It is, as far as I know, just something that I naturally do. As far as I know. Did I choose, consciously or not, to think this way? Or did it come about naturally?

And why is it that the basic way I use my brain is markedly different from the way most of the people I know seem to?

I don't have any answers to those questions. I've been thinking about it all night. The only thing I can come up with is, in our society, we're not really encouraged to be analytical. We're not taught or encouraged to be critical thinkers. (Overall, that is. Some individuals are so encouraged by a parent, teacher, or some such source. I'm speaking in general terms here, however.) Of course, that opens a whole host of lines of thought about why that would be the case, and why so many people seem to be so willing to comply, and why I'm not. (Put another way --- Mama always told me not to look into the sights of the sun. Oh, but mama, that's where the fun is[more song lyrics]). That's not the topic of this post, tho.

All of this from a Bruce Springsteen song. Who knew?