Thinking
Thinking
It's in my own best interest to develop my thoughtfulness. It's in your best interest to develop yours. It's in my best interest to help you develop your thoughtfulness. It is in both of our best interests to help others develop theirs.
When we focus our thought on our thinking it's like looking into a dark room pointing with a flashlight. Probing from corner to corner with the flashlight, we see no darkness. How reasonable it would be to conclude that since we saw light wherever we looked, that the lamp in the room was lit. That is foggy thinking; muddled thought. Our comfort depends upon how accurately we recognize reality and how we judge to deal with it. Muddled thought can be painful. We can even be muddled in how we think about our thought.
We are prisoners of the processes we use to think. We think our way through life. Thoughtfulness is the only buffer between us and pain. It is the only tool we have. What other justification do I need then to encourage me to develop my wits and refine my wisdom?
We get so used to working in the light from the flashlight it is easy to take its operation for granted. Electric lights are so commonplace today we easily forget that man had done without them for thousands of years; that within the lifetime of some people still alive today that electric lights were inconceivable. Some of the things that we are capable of thinking about concerning thought are not so very much older in concept than that lightbulb. What we're going to see shortly, in fact, is that one of the big problems in the world yet today is that some people--many people--don't yet know of some of the concepts that make thinking easy and make thinking reliable.
Even when we are thinking dimly, we think we are thinking well. Not everyone recognizes that.
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Copyright 1998 by Stephen B. Waters. This page was last built on 11/25/98; 4:18:09 PM. sbwaters@rny.com At the moment I am using Macintosh OS to work on this website. |