I was just thinking........

I clearly remember where I was and what I was doing when I first began to think about thinking. I was four years old. I know that because I was sitting on the couch (chesterfield as we called it at home)looking out the window at my Grandmother's house that was across the street. We lived up on the east hill in Cardston, not too far from where my brother in law lives now. It was a windy day and I was thinking about how I would like to go outside and run around the house. I didn't because that would be bad to do. Children who did that got whooping cough. I noticed I had just moved my arm and it suddenly occurred to me that I didn't really know how I had done that. How did I make it move? I had also been recently wondering how my cat Snowball, a big white Persian , could think. She couldn't talk and thinking obviously needed words.

I can remember clearly some of the things my mother would say and wonder what they meant. "I wish these flies were in Halifax" What sort of a magical place was Halifax? "That oatmeal will stick to your ribs" Did it really? Was the inside of me a big empty space where some food stuck and some didn't? " You're a better door than a window." This one really bothered me. I would be dancing in front of the television while the whole family was watching and someone, usually my father or my brother would say this. I had no idea what they meant since I was neither a door nor a window. I just didn't know and it annoyed me. It seemed that everyone around me knew everything. I didn't like not knowing, not understanding.

I asked a lot of questions. Having had a child that fascinated me by asking questions that I had no absolutley no answer for, I can understand somewhat the frustration I must have been. My brother's response was usually the same. I would ask why about something that he was doing and he would say "Oh just something to make little girls ask questions." The worse part was that he never would answer me. If I would ask him the time, he would hold up his watch to my face and say " Its this time." I couldn't yet tell time which leads me to wonder why I cared so much what time it was. I was no older than seven.


The importance of good thinking was more than an under the surface value in our family. It was an explicit standard of performance for all of us kids. When I asked what I should wear to school one day in grade 1, my mother replied that she didn't care. I could wear what I wanted. I replied, stamping my foot,"Daryl's mother tells her what to wear every day". My ranting was to no avail. I had to decide. My Father was not always so pleasant about his encouragement to think. He had more creative ways to compare us to dumb animals when were driving cattle, than I care to remember. We were chided to use our brains not our brawn. When we made mistakes, the feedback on our behaviour was "high IQ, low application".

This emphasis on thinking was also manifest in the lack of instruction on how to do complex tasks. It was a struggle to figure out how to harness my pony Prince to the cart by myself. There were so many buckles and straps. Probably the best example of this, "figure it out for yourself", was learning to drive a standard transmission. In my case it was the farm truck with an on the column shift. I was either 15 or 16 and wanted to be able to drive anything that could ever be available. It was summer time and the truck was parked close to the back door of the house.

Our drive way angled back toward the lane. There were trees on one side and a small irrigation ditch on the other. The driveway curved just a little and if you weren't careful and went straight you would hit the bunkhouse. It was critical to stay on the road because the final challenge was to not hit trees on both sides of the driveway where it entered the lane. Past that point all you had to do was turn and head down the lane. Of course if you didn't manage that, there was the corral to hit.

I knew all of this when I asked if I could learn to drive the truck. My Dad said yes and handed me the keys. I replied," Aren't you going to teach me?" To which my father replied," Hell no, I'm not getting in with you. You've seen me do it before." Well I did manage to find reverse, back up in great jerks and finally got the timing of using the clutch. All pretty stressful though.

So lets see...... Thinking is about using words, making decisions, understanding what others say and figuring out how to do things. The most important thing though to me is that its about figuring out what things mean, knowing the right answer.

Well now I teach thinking. I lead groups of very intelligent people through a learning process that has them become aware of the power of their assumptions. They identify their values and become aware of how their values impact their decisions. They explore their perceptions and how they draw conclusions about what the behaviour of others mean to them. They learn to ask questions of all sorts which incidentally most people find really hard to do. We talk about the power of context - all those factors that are part of the situation or problem. We become more aware of the fact that there is no reality, just perspectives that need exploring.

My experience with this whole set of skills is unfortunately that it doesn't make life particularly easier. I warn them that after the course they will be more annoyed by poor thinking and that the world will have even more shades of grey. They will make more informed decisions but making the decisions will not be easier. It will likely take more time and be in someways more painful. The worst part is the fact that there will be fewer right answers.

You see, knowledge is tentative,conjecture. It is our best hypothesis in the moment until something about the current context changes. What we can know with reflective effort is our own perspective. This is always value laden, personal and contextually driven.

A recent experience brings this all into very clear focus. My third daughter just had a baby. In the days preceding this event, I read much of book about the history of birthing. It tracked birthing practices from the middle ages up to the present time. I read about my time - the seventies. It spelled out clearly where the context of drugless, "natural" birthing practices had come from. I learned where they fit in history. It was not hard to understand. My mother's generation had been completely sedated for labour and strapped down. They woke up to find out what baby they had.

I don't know that my mother had that experience. "It wasn't something we every discussed." All I know is what I had experienced. All my friends had babies the same way and after each birth experience, we compared the ups and downs and intricacies of our labours. Giving birth was, as one of my daughters described it , initiation into "the club". There was a feeling of understanding and sharing at a visceral level of an experience that is as intense and life changing as no other. Although we couldn't really share the experience or know how it was for someone else there was a kinship in the having been through it.

My own daughters live in a different context. Epidurals are the norm. Pain is possible to remove from the birthing experience entirely. To do otherwise is the oddity. Now armed with this new information about the contextual nature of birthing practice I had a new lens to process the birth of the latest grandchild. I had become over the last few years less willing to judge and interested in this change. What did I think about it? I wasn't sure. I couldn't help wondering whether it really was a good choice. I was a child of the sixties after all. Would it be the same as baby sleeping positions. What was absolutely right in the seventies would become absolutely wrong in the 21st century. Would new research about epidurals eliminate the practice or had the experience of birthing changed forever? I really didn't know.

I was surprised then, when a feeling of absoute sadness swept over me as I learned of the epidural. It was intense and deep and took some time to consider. What was my emotional response about? What did it mean? What did I think? As I considered this I realized at first that it was about not being able to share what was one of the central experiences of my life with someone who mattered a great deal to me. I did not understand the experience that she had had and it felt as though she could not really understand mine. But, it was much more than that.

It was about the sharing of all experience across contexts. It was about the value of my own experience and the nature of wisdom. Wisdom has been something I have cherished and longed to develop. I have long been aware of the paradox," The more I know the less I know". I am even more sure of the truth of that now. In this era of constant and ever increasing change, the shelf life of knowing is very short. Everything must be tentative because the context changes so quickly. What are universal truths and what are out dated prejudices? What are best practices and what are just habits?

I guess things haven't really changed for me. I still want to be better at thinking. I need to be better at identifying the context and understanding its impacts. I need to become faster at understanding how my values are shaping my perspective. I need to be better at sharing my perspective in a way that people understand that I view my perspective as just that, my best guess at the time. I need to be become more skillful at and more open to experiencing vicariously the perspectives of others. The bottom line is that I need to become comfortable with taking action that is not based on knowing but is based on being open to possibilities.

Well thinking is still about using words, making decisions, understanding what others say and figuring out how to do things. But even more than before, it is about figuring out what things mean and considering what the best answer is at the time, knowing that there may not ever be a right answer.