Essay 25 - Why You Need Some Things to Think About

The essays up until now have fit together reasonably well. And they will give you both a start and a push as you attempt to cultivate meaning. But they will only take you so far. At some point you will have to become your own guide. The next group of essays are intended to help you with that. “But why”, you might ask, “do I need more to think about?” And the answer could be - you may not. Maybe I have given you enough to think about already. If that is the case stop reading and begin exploring. If you find yourself at a dead end, then come back and read more.

There are two reasons why it is good to have things to think about. First the cultivation of meaning is both an intellectual and an emotional journey. You need to figure out what makes sense for you, and it must feel right. These essays are exercises, aerobics if you will, for your thoughts and feelings. You need to challenge those capacities in order to get the most out of them.

Second, the essays up until this point are easy to understand but hard to act upon. You will get stuck at some point, possibly several times. In order to get unstuck you will have to see things differently. We all have unchallenged and unexamined assumptions that roadblock our thinking. Sometimes all that is needed to un-roadblock our thinking is to see a thing from another perspective.

This is what happened in the book Tom Sawyer when he got his friends this to paint his fence. He made it look like fun instead of work and they paid him to let them do it. It is all a matter of perspective. Sometimes all you need to get un-roadblocked is to see things a little differently. And that is what the next group of essays are about.

This essay is 329 words long and the audio is just over 2 1/2 minutes.