“Thought is the welling up of unknown life into consciousness
Thought is the testing of statements on the touchstone of the conscience
Thought is gazing on to the face of life, and reading what can be read,
Thought is pondering over experience, and coming to a conclusion.” ~D. H. Lawrence

    Thinking is hard work, or at least many of us seem to believe it is. We don't much care for hard work (look at all the effort we put into developing labor-saving devices) so we tend to avoid thinking as much as possible. Of course, we don't want to admit it, so we pretend that we are thinking, but most of the time, we are not. When candidates are running for a political office, few of us study each candidate carefully and make a choice based on that persons past performance, reputation, and stated opinions on the issues, all the issues. Instead, we choose a candidate based on what someone else; a pundit, a minister, a relative or a teacher; tells us. When we want a new cell-phone, we don't study the technical details and reviews, consider how we will use it, and make an intelligent and thought-out choice that is right for us, we buy what is popular with our friends or the general public, then complain because it doesn't really suit us.

    When we walk, or drive, down the street, we are not even aware of many of the things going on around us because we have long ago decided to filter them out as not meaningful to us. This makes it very easy on us, but it also means that we are unaware, at least on a conscious level, of many things. We don't see the growing forest of pine trees because we were taught that only the oaks matter. I once heard someone say that most of us spend more time selecting the cloths we are going to wear to a party than we do selecting the career we will be in probably for decades.

    Psychologists and other scientists tell us this is a good thing because we simply can't take the time to carefully think out everything we do, but I think we have probably taken this too far. We need to spend more time making decisions and then we will not have to spend as much time correcting our mistakes when we make bad ones. We need to avoid impulse buying or buying something because it is popular and start thinking about what we buy and do we really need it. Teenagers, getting control of there own money for the first time, buy things because they are popular, adults shouldn't.

    Most important, we should choose our church, religion or spiritual school based on where our parents went or what is popular with our friends. We should think about it and choose one that is really going to teach us something.