One Word on a Sign
No pictures. No color. Just one word.
Admittedly, the word could be anything, but you have to ask yourself why go to the trouble of printing a single word on a sign?
It must be a pretty important word, at least to the one who made the sign.
This sign hangs in a meeting room, and if I am sitting on the side across from it, I stare at it regularly. To be honest, it isn’t the only sign, but I don’t think there is another with just one word.
The word is THINK.
I have found myself at times having a conversation with the sign.
Why this word?
THINK
I am thinking.
THINK
I think about lots of things.
THINK
Perhaps that’s the point.
I overthink, or I think about too many things that are not all that important.
I don’t take the time to sit and think with the purpose of nothing else.
A lot of times I try to think through something, like solving a problem. In other words, rather than thinking to think in an open way, I think to solve specific problems that limit my vision to seeing bigger problems and issues.
I remember staring at a word puzzle for minutes because, for the life of me, I had no idea what the answer was. That’s my brain for you. If there is a squirrel-thought I will likely, reflexively, thoughtlessly chase it.
I haven’t found that more time to do nothing enables me to think any better.
I waste a lot of time until a deadline approaches and then I get into gear.
Whether I think better under pressure or not, is up for personal debate. It all depends.
I do think better when calm and rested.
Thinking is the opposite of reacting.
It is intentional and perhaps the only way I can in some small way manage my life.
Analytical thinking, because it requires a bit of time, also tends to improve my chances of not falling into needless pointless arguments with others.
I think, for example, we are living through a very interesting and dangerous historic political time, but I would rather just acknowledge this to you, rather than persuade you about anything, except for the encouragement to think things through.
If you and I do, I think we as individuals and members of humanity and a nation will live safer, freer, more useful lives.
It’s just a thought.