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About This Author
My name is Joy, and I love to write.
Why poetry, here? Because poetry uplifts its writer, and if she is lucky enough, her readers, too. Around us, so many objects abound to write about. Once a poet starts with a smallest, most trivial object, he shall discover that his pen will spill out what is most delicate or most majestic hidden inside him. Since the classics sometimes dealt with lofty subjects with a lofty language, a person with poetry in his soul may incline to emulate that. That is understandable. Poetry does that to a person: it enlarges the soul and gives it wings. Yet, to really soar, a poet needs to take off from the ground.
 
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Everyday Canvas
"Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself."
CHARLIE CHAPLIN
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
David Whyte
This is my supplementary blog in which I will post entries written for prompts.
August 13, 2018 at 12:07pm August 13, 2018 at 12:07pm
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Prompt: "A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices," says William James.
Agree or disagree, but if you agree, what do you think are the underlying orientations inside people to make them act this way?
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I agree, but more important than agreeing and disagreeing is the reason why William James said this. As the father of modern psychology, I believe he is urging us to think about our own thinking because the awareness of it will mean a change in our thought systems to benefit us.
As to the quote, our thoughts are shaped by patterns pushed on us by family, religion, culture, plus the extras we pick on our own on the way of living. We build our thinking system on these patterns, which they may become stronger and problematic over the years, although this may be hidden from our own consciousness. It is also easier to think along the lines of an already established template.
Since this is a painless mode of action, it feels more practical to fall back on earlier patterns of thinking when faced with a problem. This may work, at times, for being the only roadmap, but what if we are not seeing the real problem in its entirety or misidentifying it due to the lacking parts of the earlier patterns instilled in us?
Then, there is that thing called prejudices. A prejudice may not be of the famous kind such as the racial prejudice; in fact, it might apply to any area, person, or thing. Whatever the prejudice may be about, isn’t it a fact that we fall back on it either by sugar-coating it or changing its form to an unrecognizable thing? Isn’t this a pattern in itself?
Even those of us who pride themselves as problem solvers fall into these patterns. When we are aware of our own thinking patterns, then, we may have the ability to discard the degenerative ones and attain a fairly effective system of thinking, which is called analytical thinking.
This is why a quest for true analytical thinking can benefit our lives and elevate us as human beings.
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