There’s a certain inflexibility to a mind that replies with quotes, cited rules. But.
An antiquarian bookshop, Ageless Literature, posted about the cultural value of memorizing. The act internalizes a rhythm. Its breath becomes yours, and by repetition, you understand it more intimately. You can continue to access what is memorized and it can access you.
Ageless Literature, shared,
The Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi argued that the default state of the human mind is not calm but chaos: anxiety, rumination, and distraction fill any silence the mind is left in. He called this psychic entropy.
A memorized poem gives the mind somewhere to go in those silences. It is one of the few activities you can do anywhere, with no equipment, to bring a restless mind back to order.
If you are stressed, you may want to ground yourself instead of building up to more angry or scared.
How? The funny thing is: the function matters, not the content. The act of focussing does the same thing. A head can’t spiral, panic, let an emotional tornado build in a box that small. It’s a sort of automatic sheepdog of the mind for the mind.
Count ceiling tiles, or calculate number of people in the room, or work out the next numbers of Pi, recite a favourite poem, or calming mantra, or recall a Koran or Bible verse, work out a new poem, throw yourself into woodworking to do something that absorbs attention, cook something hard. Or rehearse a worst case dialogue you’ve done a dozen or hundred times. Siphon off extra cognitive space that allows for rattle stuff the brain tight.
The anchoring touchstone can be memorization or making. It is a scaffolding when there is only a blinding disorienting chaos.
Make something: set to rhythm the Lord’s Prayer: our FAther who ART in HEAven, HALLowed be thy NAME.
Make a song set to the yellow rose of Texas: the YELLow ROSE of TEXas, she KNOWS the DUES I’ve PAID.
Or infill a line, keeping the rhymes from any sonnet, the points of structure and pivot.
In other words, keep busy. All things pass. Some too slowly like a certain person’s government position..