Do we think? Do we truly think?
Response 1: Yes we do. We think and decide the food to be consumed daily, we think and plan ahead to reach our workplace or educational institution on time. We do think. A lot.
Response 2: Be more specific please. The universe is a melting-pot of disciplines. Where specifically is the area that you want me to base my answer to that question on?
Response 3: What I think and profess to the world outside will be far different and occasionally be unreasonable to you. For this reason, I shall not answer the question.
Response 4: We stress our brains quite intensely at the workplace or at the educational institution. Please do not plead with me to think anymore than I already do.
Response 5: The age for thinking has passed me. Let me spend my days relaxing and taking rest after having run a metaphorical marathon my whole life.
These are the typical comments that I could distill from my mind, imagining a situation where individuals of varying ages are posed such a question. What can you infer from all these comments? Please do take a moment to read all five responses and form an opinion.
Three of these responses can be narrowed down to the same conclusion: Life is much better lived by not submitting your mind to the churn of free-wheeling, no-holds-barred, no-judgement-rendered thoughts. The other two hint at the theory that I wish to convey through this post. Though these two opinions are slightly rough at the edges and not well-formed, these responses can be sufficiently mulled upon to obtain a nice finished thought-process eventually.
We admire the caressing touches of a Messi and the elegant movement of a Federer. We paint interesting stories with them as protagonists to be consumed by the next generation as lore. Platitudes are showered on them and every inch of space occupied by them at any instant is torn apart and analysed thread-bare. Such has been the effect that they had and will have on sports-lovers. This flame of passion for sports will never die, as never will the magnetic pull of beauty in any form. But I do ask this of you. Has sufficient analysis been done of their past, on-stage and off-stage, that did lay the successful foundation towards their painting of seminal pieces on the canvas erected by the world? Has the second-level of digging been conducted into the mental make-up that exhorts such individuals to place their performances in a competitively inaccessible plane for the present? Dwell on this. Take your time.
Harking back to the past, we regale our children with tales of solely success. Or tales that have innumerable morals seeping through their words. Or tales that humor them. Tales that make them smile or chuckle, an occasional laugh. Why have we not impressed upon them tales that trigger them to think? Why have we not open-ended stories? I have not heard of any instance where a child, after being given the opening, has been asked to come up with her own weave. As children, their brains and minds and imaginations are on a completely different path to ours. Unbridled imagination running amok. Irrational theories formed based on how the world is perceived from their eyes. Confounding psychological accounts projected through their minds onto the sheet of paper. And what do we do as parents? We nip this in the bud. We shoehorn their thought processes towards our point of view. Towards the ideals that we live our life by, This is pardonable, to a very small extent. Replace 'our' with 'society' and perform the grammatical dance after. Now read the re-formed statements. The perils of modern era parenting should dawn on you now.
Do modern-era parents jump from the sky? Are they aliens? No. They are very much our peers. Why then is it that they do not understand the damage that they could cause to a human? As humans, we learn best through observation and practice. We score best through rote memorization. Our scores cannot be translated into real-world influential actions. They are only the mean to that end. A unfathomable mean at that. Those that we learnt, we apply. How is parenting learnt? Certainly not by practice right at the start. That leaves us observation. Who do we observe? Our parents. So, we bring up our child incorporating in them 90% of values based on how we were brought up. Effectively, we are just making more of the same stale population. Instead, imagine what could happen if we observed and then analysed our parents' method of parenting, observed how our neighbours' parented their children, observed other parents's behaviours in the presence and absence of their offspring? Limit can be visualized. Extremes can be inferred. You begin to understand how parenting is to not be done. And that is a highly overlooked yet vital step in learning how to parent a child. Only when you know how not to perform a work can you perform it to the best of your availability. Our mind is conditioned that way. It responds best to consequences of failure than to the sweets of success.
The unreasonable nature of all feelings experienced by a person. Is it the fault of the victim that he fails to effectively communicate his feelings to another person? Or is it the fault of a 'confidante-designate' that he is incapable of coping up and offering suitable solace to the victim?
Response 1: Yes we do. We think and decide the food to be consumed daily, we think and plan ahead to reach our workplace or educational institution on time. We do think. A lot.
Response 2: Be more specific please. The universe is a melting-pot of disciplines. Where specifically is the area that you want me to base my answer to that question on?
Response 3: What I think and profess to the world outside will be far different and occasionally be unreasonable to you. For this reason, I shall not answer the question.
Response 4: We stress our brains quite intensely at the workplace or at the educational institution. Please do not plead with me to think anymore than I already do.
Response 5: The age for thinking has passed me. Let me spend my days relaxing and taking rest after having run a metaphorical marathon my whole life.
These are the typical comments that I could distill from my mind, imagining a situation where individuals of varying ages are posed such a question. What can you infer from all these comments? Please do take a moment to read all five responses and form an opinion.
Three of these responses can be narrowed down to the same conclusion: Life is much better lived by not submitting your mind to the churn of free-wheeling, no-holds-barred, no-judgement-rendered thoughts. The other two hint at the theory that I wish to convey through this post. Though these two opinions are slightly rough at the edges and not well-formed, these responses can be sufficiently mulled upon to obtain a nice finished thought-process eventually.
We admire the caressing touches of a Messi and the elegant movement of a Federer. We paint interesting stories with them as protagonists to be consumed by the next generation as lore. Platitudes are showered on them and every inch of space occupied by them at any instant is torn apart and analysed thread-bare. Such has been the effect that they had and will have on sports-lovers. This flame of passion for sports will never die, as never will the magnetic pull of beauty in any form. But I do ask this of you. Has sufficient analysis been done of their past, on-stage and off-stage, that did lay the successful foundation towards their painting of seminal pieces on the canvas erected by the world? Has the second-level of digging been conducted into the mental make-up that exhorts such individuals to place their performances in a competitively inaccessible plane for the present? Dwell on this. Take your time.
Harking back to the past, we regale our children with tales of solely success. Or tales that have innumerable morals seeping through their words. Or tales that humor them. Tales that make them smile or chuckle, an occasional laugh. Why have we not impressed upon them tales that trigger them to think? Why have we not open-ended stories? I have not heard of any instance where a child, after being given the opening, has been asked to come up with her own weave. As children, their brains and minds and imaginations are on a completely different path to ours. Unbridled imagination running amok. Irrational theories formed based on how the world is perceived from their eyes. Confounding psychological accounts projected through their minds onto the sheet of paper. And what do we do as parents? We nip this in the bud. We shoehorn their thought processes towards our point of view. Towards the ideals that we live our life by, This is pardonable, to a very small extent. Replace 'our' with 'society' and perform the grammatical dance after. Now read the re-formed statements. The perils of modern era parenting should dawn on you now.
Do modern-era parents jump from the sky? Are they aliens? No. They are very much our peers. Why then is it that they do not understand the damage that they could cause to a human? As humans, we learn best through observation and practice. We score best through rote memorization. Our scores cannot be translated into real-world influential actions. They are only the mean to that end. A unfathomable mean at that. Those that we learnt, we apply. How is parenting learnt? Certainly not by practice right at the start. That leaves us observation. Who do we observe? Our parents. So, we bring up our child incorporating in them 90% of values based on how we were brought up. Effectively, we are just making more of the same stale population. Instead, imagine what could happen if we observed and then analysed our parents' method of parenting, observed how our neighbours' parented their children, observed other parents's behaviours in the presence and absence of their offspring? Limit can be visualized. Extremes can be inferred. You begin to understand how parenting is to not be done. And that is a highly overlooked yet vital step in learning how to parent a child. Only when you know how not to perform a work can you perform it to the best of your availability. Our mind is conditioned that way. It responds best to consequences of failure than to the sweets of success.
The unreasonable nature of all feelings experienced by a person. Is it the fault of the victim that he fails to effectively communicate his feelings to another person? Or is it the fault of a 'confidante-designate' that he is incapable of coping up and offering suitable solace to the victim?
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