"Thinking is like loving and dying--each of us must do it for himself."--Josiah Royce
There are some things that nobody else can do for us. Thinking is one of them. We can seek the advice and thoughts of others as resource material for our own thinking. But we dare not allow others to either think or speak for us. Sometimes the easy way out of having to make a difficult decision is to have someone else make it for us. But the easy way is not always the right way. Each of us has a unique mind and a unique set of experiences with which to formulate our own unique thoughts. And we owe it to ourselves and to society to do our own thinking.
Thought is a powerful force. Albert Schweitzer said, "Thought is the strongest thing we have. Work done by true and profound thought--that is a real force." Sometimes we may think that our ideas would not be of interest to others. We feel that we should leave the thinking to those who are more intelligent than we think we are. But one of the greatest gifts we have to give to others is our ideas. Through our thinking we may create a work of literature, invent something that will be of value to others, or simply help a friend solve a personal problem.
Most of us have more resources in our mind than we can possibly imagine. In his book, “You Can If You Think You Can,” Norman Vincent Peale begins one chapter with the words, "All the resources you need are in your mind." Most of us never come close to tapping all the resources of our minds. Who knows what we might accomplish if we just devoted a little more time to profound thinking? We all have our fair share of personal problems in life. And the problems of the world seem almost limitless. With so many problems, we need lots of solutions. How many of us have potential solutions to some of our own problems, and perhaps even to some of the world's problems, locked up within our minds?
It has been said that "a mind is a terrible thing to waste." And so it is. We can sit back and wait for others to do the thinking, or we can put our own minds to work and try to find solutions ourselves. We may think that we don't have the mental potential to do much creative thinking. But how do we know, if we don't give it a try? Why not add our mental resources to those of others and just see what we can come up with collectively? What do we have to lose from trying to do more thinking?
Copyright 2014 Allen Smith
TB-70—Posted—06/09/2014
