Imagine A Cat: an exercise to expand your brain
Critical thinking often requires us to hold a lot of ideas in our heads at once. And not just hold them, but connect them together in a way that paints a bigger picture, one invisible to the naked eye but often deeply important. This can put a real strain on your brain if you aren't used to it. So let's lift some intellectual weights.
The first step? Imagine a cat.
Now write down every detail you can about the cat you've just imagined. Are they a big cat or small? Domestic or wild? What's their sex? Their fur and eye colors? Are they humanoid, or a more realistic animal? If you pictured them as an image, is the image photorealistic, or stylized in some way? Make a note of any details you can think of, no matter how many or few, then come back to this post.
Well done! You've successfully imagined a cat. No matter what they look like, or how you depicted them, you've done it right. And that's because there are no wrong answers to this prompt. Anything you could have possibly thought of, no matter how silly or unexpected, is a part of the concept that the English language represents through the word "cat".
Try to hold that in your mind for a moment. It's a deceptively simple word - three letters long, the kind of thing we learn when we're taking our first steps into literacy. But the breadth of information that it represents is incredible. The concept of a "cat" contains not only every kind of cat that exists, but every kind of cat that a human mind can imagine - a potentially endless variety. Everything from an actual physical lion, to Beerus, the God of Destruction, is an equally real and valuable facet of what the word "cat" can represent. Take a moment to really absorb that fact. Try and imagine how many different things - both real and imagined - all exist as cats at the same time. Consider what this says about the word itself - how all-encompassing and powerful it truly is.
Then let the idea go. Give yourself a while to let your mind relax and bend back into its usual shape. If that helped you, well done! If it didn't, because you're already the kind of rubber brain who can easily imagine All The Cats Ever Simultaneously, congratulations: you have one of the necessary skills needed to be a successful occultist or philosopher. And if you struggled with this exercise, that's fine too! You can repeat it as many times as you need to, just like any other exercise. It's going through the process that's important, not how far you're able to reach in one sitting.
And that's all!
