In my personal opinion, what I think, is the most significant thing about me. I live inside my mind. My mind almost never turns off. One of the reasons I like major surgery is that for a time, I am aware of nothing, not one single thought. It is the rare time when my thinking rests. On the other hand, perhaps my greatest reticence about death is the fear that once I am dead I will no longer think.
[Yeah, of course, I could be wrong. I am not saying what will happen, only what I fear might happen.]
Since my thinking is so much a part of who I am, it seems essential for me to share my thinking if I am creating a record of me.
“Don't believe everything you think. Thoughts are just that - thoughts.” ― Allan Lokos, Pocket Peace: Effective Practices for Enlightened Living
“Don't believe everything you think.” ― Thomas E. Kida
OK, perhaps there is some truth to the idea that what you think is not who you are, because the quote is attributed to lots of people. You are not what you think. Perhaps this quote is saying that since thoughts change that the essence of your existence is different from these shifting thoughts inside your head.
Often, when someone says something that I think is forkin’ ape-shot crazy wrong, I remind myself that they are not done yet, that their thoughts are like an egg in boiling water. Right now it is soft boiled, but, given time, their thoughts will firm up.
I have thoughts about God that have ranged from traditional fundamental belief in God, to agnostic, to atheist, pantheist [God is in everything], panentheism [everything is in God], and on and on go my thoughts. While the thinking changes, it is always part of who I am. Maybe I take what I think with a grain of salt, I still say that my thinking, and how and why my thinking has changed is a big part of my life story.
If there are family members in the future that wonder about me, they will get a fuller picture of who I am by knowing what I think, and how I came to my beliefs. Knowing I sold shoes for JC Pennys, on commision will tell you less about me than my thoughts about selling on commision.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. --Abraham Lincoln
President Lincoln may be right. It is possible, perhaps likely, that sharing my thoughts will expose me as the fool that I am. I have no BUT here, but there is a HOWEVER. However, as I tell the story of my life, if I am a fool, that is what I want to do. I doubt I have the skill to really, fully reveal myself to anyone, but that is what I hope to do. I hope to explain myself, first to myself, and secondly to my son, my family, my friends, and the mildly curious.
While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die. --Leonardo da Vinci
I connect thinking with learning, thoughts with belief. My rationale is the explanation of what I do and why I do what I do. I learn by study, but I also learn by experience. Oooh, oooh, and what I feel about stuff has a dramatic impact on what I think. Maybe, since feelings change that explains in part why thinking changes.
In the New Testament there are what appear to be conflicting statements about faith and works. In the world of quotations there are conflicting statements about thoughts and actions. The truth is that our works and our actions have links to our thoughts. Faith is a sort of thinking. What we believe and what we do are not separate things. But where we go, what we do, who we marry, the work we perform all that stuff takes on greater significance when we also know what is happening in that invisible world that exists between our ears.
No comments:
Post a Comment