Critical thinking is hard to come by because it needs a lot of training; painstaking training; meticulous calculating and a lot of discipline in keeping oneself fresh. We are used to being trained by another but self training is rare and not common. So what is this ‘rare’ form of thinking?
First, you need to be able to think about your thinking.
It might seem a bit impossible but here is a starter. How can one eat while he eats? How can one see while she sees? How can one speak while he speaks? But somehow you need to be able to think about your thinking. Otherwise, critical thinking is what love is to a person who has not loved ever.
Once you develop this early primary skill you know that you think. At this point, you know that you actually think. You can start to see how you think.
Initially this happens only for a brief moment from time to time. Once in several months or years. Then it happens more frequently and for longer periods of time.
Then you start to realize that you think with your heart not with your brain.
Metaphorically speaking, of course, you begin to realise the importance of emotions, feelings, impulses, urges. This usually hits a person very hard. You never thought that you made decisions based on your emotions, did you? When you begin to realise that you do, it is painful. The pain is so much, some may regress few steps and retract to their previous way of thinking.
Once you have come to the stage where you are aware how emotions colour your thinking and decision making, you begin to look different. You look professional. You look kind. You look unhurried. And you can look people in their eye, without undue discomfort. You are no longer that proud idiot deluded with your youth or authority or muscle power.
These stages have nothing to do with the chronological age of a person. Generally if the first stage occurred when you were 30, the latter stages come later, sometimes years or decades. Sometimes, never. Of course, you can regress, and move forward again. Actually, that happens frequently.
As you start to see how emotions affect your decisions and thoughts and then behaviour, you start to shiver at the new power you have acquired.
Now you can control your behaviour! For the very first time in your life, you can actually decide what words you are going to speak; what decision you are going to make. Well, not quite, as yet.
Of course, now the emotions are slightly more malleable. You see your emotions. You see how they affect your thoughts and behaviour. As you push on you think based on your emotions . You make decisions guided by your emotions. At least you are aware of this.
Education level, chronological age, social or moral status has very little to do with how emotions influence one’s decision making and thinking and behaviour.
Education level, chronological age, social or moral states mould the excuses one gives for allowing emotions to affect one’s behaviour.
So the doctor says that she is aware of some benefits of drinking alcohol and that is why she did not oppose her husband’s drinking in the beginning.
The illiterate, manual labourer woman says that her husband was exhausted with day’s work and needed the alcohol, and that is why she did not oppose his drinking in the beginning.
Neither of them are aware of the true reason. Why did they not protest at the beginning?
Once you know that emotions do affect your decision making and how it happens, you have an exciting new option on the table to try and change your decision making.
Once you know that you were scared of being called stupid and ‘godey’ by your husband and his clan (and even your clan), and hated to have those uncomfortable emotions, you just decided not to protest. Sure you had some other different kind of discomfort inside you when you saw his drinking years ago, but that discomfort was bearable. Or so you thought!
However, years have passed since you made that decision for the first time.
Then again and again, you made the same decision. May be the reason changed, the excuse, to be precise. Now you know that you were actually stupid for not protesting when your husband took you to parties and then abandoned you for drinking with other men for hours. So how can you make a change in your decision making?
You can begin to make a change in your decision making process by learning to gradually reduce the time lag.
There is a time lag between the moment ‘A’ of actual decision making and the moment ‘B’ of actual realisation why you made that decision. For most of us the time lag between moments ‘A’ and ‘B’ is infinity. For a handful of individuals it is a few years or decades. For very few individuals it is months.
If you can reduce this time lag to months, there is still time to change things, most of the time.
After six months of being abandoned at parties by your husband you might decide this is enough.
Now you need to take a different course of action. You are gaining ability to actually control your decision making. It is no longer your husband, or his clan, or your clan, or society, or the norms, or the subculture that makes decisions for you. It is YOU!
Can you believe it? For the very first time in your life, you start to make your own decisions!
Just imagine what you can do if you could reduce the time lag to few days or even hours?
Next morning you get up and tell your husband that it was not you who is stupid but he.
After all, it was he who continued to abandon his beloved wife at parties and spend hours and hours with boring men telling horrible jokes about women.
Let me titillate you a bit more. Just imagine that this happens in real time!
As your husband departs, giving you a kiss and a promise that he would be with you in a moment, you notice the discomfort in you.
As time passes you can see the discomfort rising and then you can see why you opt not to protest. The moment you do that, you can change your decision if you want tom and the way you want to.
Furthermore, you can go find him and tell him straight to his face exactly what you want to tell him.
Other options: you may leave a message and take a taxi home, or you may send a note to him, or even you may whisper your concern in his ear.
You may decide on something seductive to remove him from there and then later reveal how uncomfortable you felt at that moment.
It does not matter if your decision is better or right or wrong. Moral or immoral. Victorian or Arya Sinhala Buddhist (which do not differ much). AT LAST the decision is yours. You chose!
Now this is what I call ‘critical thinking’ that is being able to think about how to think so that you can feel how the thinking process is flowing.
It’s a lot of hard work; many loves lost, many pains felt, and many more loves to be lost eventually with even more pains felt right through one. Good luck!
