I don’t think it’s too radical an idea to offer that our first experience of thinking began when each of us taught ourselves to talk. Each of us figured out that something important was going on when that big warm being kept making the same noise over and over. In our wordless mind we deduced correctly that we were to mimic the sound and somehow echo it back to the big being. All of this was done with wordless thinking. Yet each of us echoed back something like “Mama” to that big warm food source. We got off to such a good start!
Where things went wrong came about with what wasn’t done next. The grownup, like Mum, who heard the first word being spoken didn’t respond with something like, “Aha! Little Rickie just spoke his first word. Time to begin his formal thinking lessons!” My conclusion would be that nothing like that was ever said to Little Rickie from his first word until he went off to public school where any hope of learning some formal ideas about thinking were never on the curriculum. No grownup, no teacher ever said, “Time for the formal thinking lessons to begin.”
Over the centuries many wise souls came up with many such ideas about thinking. Too often, as in the case of Socrates, the wise soul was executed. The existing lord and master was good enough at thinking to know that nothing was going to be worse for him than to have a realm of subjects that could think. And I submit therein lies the problem. Thinking is okay if the thinking never leads to questioning authority. I don’t want to get into the re-telling of the evils of being governed but rather about how come we aren’t guided to thinking.
In an earlier post, Shining My Light, I talked about my tendency as a little boy to always be asking questions. I was curious about everything. I didn’t have the depth of knowledge to know that I was questioning “the truth”, the words of authority, and by lucky circumstances didn’t get smacked down. Yet that’s what we typically do to our children when they ask too many questions. We begin replying negatively, starting with something as simple as “Why do you keep asking why? Do it because I say so!” My experience with asking questions in Sunday school and similar situations with my mother were never put to me as something bad, something not to do, and I learned that questioning was ok. Was I some sort of special person, someone who questions? I don’t think so. I think that questioning is natural, doesn’t need to be taught so much as encouraged when it presences itself.I learned that asking questions, questioning authority was good. Fortunately in my formative years before I was six, or seven or eight I never came up against an authority that smacked me down. I never learned that it could be dangerous to search for the truth and that we humans must search for the truth.
That’s what the purpose of thinking is. We think to get to what’s true, what’s real, what’s going on in our world. We began this with learning to speak, learning the correct words for things and actions. As we master language, we’re taught how to act, how to understand what’s okay to do and what’s wrong to do. We’re introduced to morality, to ethics. It’s wrong to hit my sister. It’s good to put away my toys after playing with them. It’s good to eat my spinach. It’s bad to play with matches. As we grew the lessons got more complex, more conceptual. I went to Sunday school and learned that Noah built an ark and put pairs of every animal on Earth on it because a flood was coming. Beep beep beep! Alarm bells went off in my little head and I asked questions. I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know that there were special truths, religion, politics and sex to name the big three and that one never, ever questions them. Later, when I discovered that certain questions carry a danger with them, it was too late. And I did often get in trouble with my questioning but never fatally the way that Socrates did.
None of us like having our “authority” questioned. We all want things done our way and get cranky if we don’t get what we want. Yet somehow we humans must get to the point where having our truths questioned is not only ok but important. Why?
Because each of us was bestowed with the miraculous gift of our life. It’s our challenge to use that gift to its fullest. To discover how to do that will take the best thinking that we’re capable of and having our thoughts be free to take us on that journey. We must always get to the truth about what’s best for us. It’s never too late to take this on, to start over and become something different.
It’s going to take everything that’s in you to make big changes to your life, to do your best. Only you can figure out what that looks like. You will face obstacles and will often be smacked down by others, by family and friends. For me working to build A World of Honour became my mission. I can think of no better way to spend my time than working on making a difference in the world and doing that by passing on whatever wisdom I’ve accumulated to the world. It’s how I’ve chosen to express the thinker that is me in the best way possible. I invite you to look at your life, examine the thinker that is you, and see if you are doing the best that you can be doing. Then go and do your best.
A World of Honour 