*Typing*

I was having drinks with a comedian last night at a dive bar in the Lower Eastside. Every so often, the bartenders would cook up a mess of fries and then pass them out for free with little packets of ketchup. As we picked away at our basket of fries, the comedian described to me the difference between popular art and original art. He likened popular art to Wendy's and original art to The French Laundry. As an artist, you have to decide what art you're creating. If you're creating The French Laundry, don't complain when you're not receiving the same kind of attention as Wendy's. If you're creating Wendy's, don't whine when you're not as respected as The French Laundry.

At times, we will be confronted with a force that is far greater than our own. We are expected to fight until the very end; to never submit. But, is submission not grace under power? If the knee does not bed, the leg will break.

There was once a boy who made his living carrying water to a king. He would sling a long, bamboo pole over his shoulders and hang a bucket from each side. The bucket that hung from his right side had a small crack in it and as he walked, the water would trickle from this crack.

By the time the boy reached the king, the bucket on his left side was full while the bucket on his right side had lost several cups of water. The king would pay the boy, deducting the water lost, and the boy would then make his long journey back to the well.

One day, the leaky bucket said to the boy, “I am sorry that I am not without cracks like my brother. I know the loss of water causes you to make more trips.” The boy was quiet for a time, breathing heavily as he walked up the face of a hill. Finally, the boy said to the leaky bucket, “Look down.”

When the leaky bucket looked down, he saw a string of wildflowers on his side of the trail that stretched from the well as far as the eye could see. The boy continued, “The water you have spilled, has made my journey more beautiful.”

Time can move fast or slow depending on how you perceive it. Each day is comprised of just 24 hours. For some, these 24 hours go by like a flash in the pan. For others, they expand as far as the eye can see like a terrible desert.

Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity says the rate at which time passes depends on the observer's frame of reference. Einstein was once asked to explain relativity in layman's terms. He said that if you put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, it seems like an hour. However, if you sit with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. Pain moves slower. Pleasure moves faster.

In between these two extremes is another measurement of time called flow. Flow happens when you are totally immersed in a task in front of you. In a flow state, time doesn't move fast or slow. It moves both fast and slow. Time becomes difficult to register. Slippery, almost. When we are in flow, hours can feel like minutes and days. Time becomes a blissful eternity.

Metacognition is an awareness of one's own thought process. That definition is a bit heady. Some describe it as simply thinking about thinking. Steve Jobs used to practice metacognition by sitting on a meditation cushion and staring at a wall for hours, following his thoughts.

Not all of us have such an abundance of time and so another path in honing our metacognition is sitting still for two to three minutes and forcing ourselves to think in complete sentences.

If we closely follow our thoughts, we will notice they're a series of incomplete sentences. They might look something like this: What do I want for lu... I need to follow up with... Shelly still hasn't text me... I love this song... Is she mad at m... I wonder if the salmon is still go... I need more paper towe...

By challenging ourselves to not only have a thought but finish the thought, we will become better, shaper and clearer thinkers. This is metacognition. It's noticing how we think so that we can learn to think better.