The Cow in Our Heads: The Paralysis of Rumination

That gentle sway, the spiral of grass and saliva, that perfectly closed, monotonous movement, as if each bite were a circular meditation. I’ve seen them countless times by the highway, ignoring the noise, with a distant look, like someone staring blankly, pupils unfocused, at seven in the morning. They graze patiently, as if knowing it’s pointless to try and keep up with the speed of our lives. Or perhaps they understand that even when nothing makes sense, you just have to keep chewing.

I watch them, these creatures who observe nothing, and I think their actions resemble the almost endless cycle of a galaxy, an infinite spiral, a movement that keeps you anchored in place.

The highway is all about noise, speed, decisions, and destiny. The cow, on the other hand, in its rumination, represents pause, repetition, life stopped and in a loop all at once. Two worlds separated by little more than a guardrail.

Inside our own heads, there's a cow with empty eyes, constantly ruminating. It ignores all reasons or pleas to stop and take a new bite. This passive-aggressive way it keeps going over the same things eventually drives us mad.

To ruminate isn't to think; it's to walk a path you've already walked, only to end up back at the start, carving a rut like Scrooge McDuck in the comics. It’s a hamster wheel, but without the benefit of exercise. If only turning over our thoughts would soften their impact, but no, it does the opposite. You get stuck chewing on memories until you can barely speak, going round and round a mental roundabout without noticing the exits – which are there, but unmarked.

We aren't born this way, ruminating and disconnected. We arrive in the world with a clear, alert, curious gaze. But life pushes us into that strange state of looking without truly seeing, of being present only in body while our minds endlessly replay the same things. And there we can remain stuck forever. One day, we realize the world no longer fits us, like a garment of the wrong size; the enthusiasm for living has worn thin and disappeared. Then the hope dies first, and we simply wait for our bodies to catch up, ruminating all the while, stuck at a dull point in space as time passes by.

Cows, at least, have a clear digestive plan. They have four stomach compartments, and when they ruminate, they regurgitate food to break down fiber more effectively. We don't.

Our rumination is a kind of emotional sport without a medal. Sometimes I wonder how many hours of real life we lose inside our heads, stuck on a bend in our thoughts, just as cows stop by the fence, not really seeing the cars pass. The unsettling part is that while ruminating cows seem empty of intention but full of peace, we are full of intention and empty of peace.

The comparison is unfair to them, of course. They ruminate purely out of biology. We ruminate out of paralysis. It’s like those terrifying nightmares where you run with all your might from Freddy Krueger down a hallway, but you don’t move. It's the fear of moving, of deciding, of making mistakes, of life moving forward without our supervision. Or perhaps it's a desire to be captured, a leftover instinct from being easy prey in the past, accepting the end without letting it actually happen.

To ruminate is to stay on the sidelines, watching, imagining possible accidents without taking a step towards any specific destination. Perhaps that’s why the highway fascinates me so much: because it has direction, arrows, signs, a purpose that doesn’t allow detours. The highway is life when we dare to live it. To ruminate is life when we hide from ourselves. But, just like with cars seen from a distance, solutions never reach us: we only sense them, we see them speed past without ever getting on board.

It's easy to say, but we must start swallowing. Not to suppress emotions until we burst, but to accept that some parts of a problem won't break down, no matter how much we chew on them.

Some wounds don't close through analysis; some pains require you to adapt your expression, harden the surrounding muscle, get up, dismiss them, and carry on. Chewing too much is not a way to live; chewing eternally is not a way to nourish yourself.

There's no final reflection here. I don't want to keep going over and over things. I could fill pages and more pages of this newspaper until the paper ran out, and we still wouldn't get anywhere. That is the panic: to stay there. To imagine that when the last day arrives, when the cosmos goes out and the last black hole swallows even its own shadow, there will still be a cow looking from behind a guardrail… and still seeing nothing.