Thoughtful Thursdays::How We Think

THOUGHTFUL THURSDAYS IS A NEW COLUMN ON MY BLOG

by  someone who has promised to let us into her thoughts every thursday

This is the first post , enjoy :D

Just for a bit of introduction on what I intend this column to be, Thoughtful Thursdays is going to be my reflection of the things happening around me, my opinion of issues, my perception on life, my trials, my successes and lastly my outlet to have fun sharing all of the above with interested readers. This is my first attempt at blogging and this has been a long time coming. 

The main reason that has held me back in the past is the issues of continuance. I would love to be able to be consistent with my blog entries or else why do it at all. I don’t want to be a ‘one blog wonder’ (my poor attempt at making you smile J did it work?), so I will try as much as I can to keep blogging for as long as I can. 

So for my first entry, I would like to share my thoughts on ‘How We Think’.

Before taking the course ‘text and meaning’ in my freshman year in university, I had seen the Sunflower painting by Van Gogh on numerous occasions, I just used to think ‘it’s just another painting of yellow flowers…no biggie’. When we studied the painting in class and tried to link Van Gogh’s state of mind to this painting. We considered his choice of colours, paint strokes, the coarseness of the finished work with their intended meanings. The thing is, this is not the first or the last painting people would attach various meanings to; whether it was (is) the artists’ true intention or not. 

Sometimes I just think we try to make a big deal out of nothing to serve our own tendencies to be connoisseurs of the arts.

We see and read about upcoming trends be it in fashion, sexual orientations and social trends and because of how we have been brought up in our various communities we either regard these trends as good, bad, ok, or just act plain indifferent.

 How do we react to topics on homosexual activities? In a pure African society, these would be frowned on because it is not acceptable in ‘our culture’. 

Why have we associated smoking and alcohol drinking to people who are ‘uncouth’? is it because in our childhood, the elderly said things like people who smoke are bad, drinking is for bad people and so on.

 Now that we are matured, have we taken time to understand why things like that were said? Or do we just continue on and pass them to the younger ones hence continuing the cycle.

At one point in our lives, we have been in situations that have caused us to draw conclusions on issues and generalize based on them. 

‘I won’t consider dating overly hot guys because they are all players’-says a girl who has had bad experiences with one or more guys in this category.

 ‘All Nigerian business men are con artists’-says a man who unfortunately fell in the wrong hands. 

Yes our personal experiences should make us more prudent in subsequent choices but not cloud the good parts of what we can gain.

        Different things influence the way we think. But we should not just take things (well most things) as they are. We should learn to question the status quo and convince ourselves enough before forming our own opinions of things. We should also avoid letting chains of bad experiences cloud our judgements. Lastly we should stop being lazy and think, think for ourselves, think outside the proverbial Box. This would eventually help us learn more and help us develop an open mind to understanding our environment and appreciate things from different perspectives. 

(gosh I think I used the word ‘things’ like a hundred times lol)

                                                      Signed: AOI