This page will offer some suggestions for more helpful thinking. They may or may not work for you, but we invite you to try some of them and see how you go. There are lots of other thoughts from the Crafting Gentleness blog team to be found in the weblog.
One of the principles of the Crafting Gentleness site is that it can be helpful to think about your thinking, not to an obsessive degree, but to the extent that such a process helps you to make better sense of your experience.
Thinking about your thinking
Karl Marx once noted that we make our own history, but not quite as we please. In terms of our thinking, it is perhaps important to remember that we have been born into situations unfamiliar to us. From the moment of our birth we start learning what we can from those around us. By the time we reach (one hopes) maturity we often haven’t taken any time to consider where our thinking and behaviour comes from. Worse, we often labour under the impression that we are in complete command of all the thinking and behaviour we engage in.
Try starting with the ideas you are most passionate about, the notions you are most willing to defend, the ideas or people you are most willing to attack or denigrate. Make use of your experience of heightened emotion and feeling to help you find your least-questioned assumptions, the darkest corners of your awareness. Step into the strongest feelings and allow them to lead you to explore other possibilities for thinking, some of which you may not have encountered before.
Remember, you don't have to think the way(s) you do. You happen to, but you can also think differently.
The ways we think have consequences for how we feel about what we experience.
The ways we think have consequences for how we relate to other people and to ourselves.
If we can think differently, we can also feel differently and relate differently.
As you become more aware of the quality and character of your thinking you can maybe come to a more helpful understanding of how your thinking can change, or, more importantly perhaps, of how or whether you would like your thinking to change.
Starter Question: “Correct” or “Helpful”?
Try this question to gauge how you might be thinking about your thinking. Which of the following is more in line with your own thinking?
1. I think there are correct and incorrect ways to think, talk, and write about experience
2. I think there are helpful and unhelpful ways to think, talk, and write about experience
What are you thinking about as you respond to these questions?
The words we use
To give a name to a thing is as gratifying as giving a name to an island, but it is also dangerous: the danger consists in one's becoming convinced that all is taken care of and that once named the phenomenon has also been explained (Primo Levi, 1991).
It may be helpful at this point to think about the words we use, and the ways in which we use words to communicate what we think we understand about our experience. Academics sometimes use the term “discourse” to speak about language, how we use language, and the consequences of how we use language.
It is maybe helpful to think about how words and language shape our lives as we shape words and language. This might be not so much so we can spend our time focusing on the detail of everything we say, but as a way to work towards particular attitudes of gentleness, and a more appropriately helpful political engagement with the people and situations we encounter.
The ways in which we think/speak/write about our lives, the ways in which we think/speak/write about other people’s lives, it could be helpful to assume that they all make a difference, and it doesn't take much to check that assumption in relation to what actually happens.
Words
But maybe the words I say or write matter much less than the kind of relationships I foster? Is it far more important to me now that I spend quality time in people's company rather than that I communicate information accurately or successfully? Maya Angelou once said (perhaps in her 70th birthday interview with Oprah Winfrey):
"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel".
Words. The frustration of words, the frequent pointlessness of words, the power of words to raise us up and crush us down. Perhaps the more we think words matter, the less words tend to matter. Or rather, the more we become distracted by the presumed importance of words in a particular situation, the less likely we may be aware of the colour of the relationships in that situation, or of the textures and currents and colours of influence and our own participation in the play of influences. More to the point, the more we get hung up on our words the less aware we may become of how we are treating the people around us. I'm sure there are plenty of times in my life where I have subtly or not so subtly disrespected people I have known or even people I have loved because I was so intent on getting my word out, so intent on speaking 'my truth', so intent on naming my islands and making my mark. Sometimes shutting up isn't all that bad.
"It is not necessary to always think words. Words often keep me from acting in a fully intuitive way. Fears, indecision and frustration feed on words. Without words they usually stop. When I am trying to figure out how I should relate to someone, especially a stranger, if I will stop thinking words, and listen to the situation, and just be open, I find I act in a more appropriate, more spontaneous, often original, sometimes even courageous way. Words are at times good for looking back, but they are confining when I need to act in the present" (Hugh Prather, Notes to Myself, 1970)
"Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away" (Dinah Craik, A Life for a Life, 1859).
If the words and ideas become more important than the character of the relationship where I am at, where I happen to be, then what am I playing at? Loving respect works better that interesting words or ideas any day, I would hope, and I would hope that some words and ideas can get me closer to loving respect.
Possible Helpful Approaches:
The following have been developed to make more room for the possibilities of a deeper listening in relation to what happens.
Speak/Write Plainly
Sometimes people think they are obliged to write in obscure jargon, especially when doing academic work. This is not necessarily so. There is no obligation to use complex language, but most people do expectat that you be clear about what you are saying and that you be accountable for what you mean by what you say.
Don’t be afraid to ask yourself “What do I mean?” at any point. Often we say things without being very clear about what we mean, and asking yourself that question on a regular basis serves as a frequent challenge to clarify your thoughts. Don’t be worried if this is a little difficult to begin with; we tend not to ask ourselves that question much. Over time, however, you will be able find a range of ways to express yourself, and you will become clearer about what you are thinking, what you want to think, and how you would like to communicate your ideas.
Equally, don’t be reluctant to ask “What do you mean?” of the people who write the texts you read (that includes this one), or of people who speak to or at you. Often we allow the writers of texts extra authority simply because they have put their thoughts in writing. Often we allow people extra authority simply because they have an official platform to speak from. But not every person communicates clearly - often people write and say things without it being terribly clear what they mean.
George Orwell is perhaps best known for writing novels like 1984 and Animal Farm. He also wrote quite forcefully about the need to communicate in plain language. In May 1945, in the shadow of the Second World War, he penned an essay called “Politics and the English Language”. In it he says,
“What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualising you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning.”
“If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language - and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to A narchists - is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase ... into the dustbin, where it belongs.”
How am I thinking?
Take any abstract term, like “culture” or "society", for example, and spend three minutes writing down whatever comes to mind. Write it in continuous prose rather than in note form. Keep writing, without corrections, until your time is up. Look back over what you have written and try to make sense of the various meanings, associations, and assumptions that you have come up with. Ask yourself if you can manage to live your life without using such abstract terms? Do they tend to distance us or bring us nearer to what actually happens?
Where are the people?
One way to keep a check on how abstract your or others’ language gets is to keep the question “Where are the people (in all of this)?” at the back of your mind, or maybe even at the front of your mind. It is in more subtly understanding the consequences of how people (including us) influence each other by what we say, what we think, how we feel, what we do, that we can come to less inadequate, less disrespectful, more helpful ways of speaking about our own and other people’s experience.
When we speak we are almost always, no, pretty much always talking about our own lives or the lives of other people. But sometimes it can be hard to remember that, especially if we talk about our lives in quietly abstract ways. There’s a bumper sticker that declares “The Best Things in Life Aren’t Things”. Often a focus on “things” can distract us from thinking in terms of people, drawing us away from those relationships that are always ongoing and always changing in interesting ways.
It is perhaps helpful to keep the following questions in mind in relation to any situation or question that we consider. These questions can be helpful to guide your own thinking as you seek to understand any issues:
People think what they think, do what they do
People think what they think,and do what they do, and thankfully different people tend to think and do differently. But I am responsible for my own awareness of how I myself think and do. I believe that what we think and do matters because there tend to be consequences for what we continue to do and for how we relate to/with people.
Consider the following questions one by one, and then consider them all together:
Sometimes the ways in which we talk about what happens hardly correspond at all to what actually happens. These discrepancies are often intentional; take lying for example – most people have lied at some point in their lives, where they deliberately misrepresent what has happened. Sometimes people in positions of institutional power seek to make their actions invisible and their positions unassailable by misrepresenting what happens, as has been seen in corporate and governmental scandals of recent years.
However, more importantly perhaps, such discrepancies are often unintentional. Often we inherit ways of thinking, speaking, and writing from the people that have gone before us. These ways of thinking, speaking, and writing have consequences for how we feel, how we act, and how we relate to others and to ourselves.
The onus, then, can be on us to become more aware of where our thinking comes from. We can become more aware of how what we think, say, or write might be leading us to feel, act, and relate in particular ways. We can become more responsible and accountable for how we are in the world.
Can we work out less misrepresentative ways and more helpful ways of making sense of what actually happens?
The more distant what we think, say, and write becomes from what actually happens, is it less likely that we will be in a position to challenge dynamics of coercion, violence, domination, and oppression?
Can actively denying or negating our or others ability to come to less inadequate understandings of what actually happens be to actively disempower ourselves and others?
"In order for us to maintain our way of living, we must, in a broad sense, tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves. It is not necessary that the lies be particularly believable. The lies act as barriers to truth. These barriers are necessary because without them many deplorable acts would become impossibilities" (Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words, 2000)
You are invited to consider that you are able to work out and work through less misrepresentative ways of speaking about your experience, less disrespectful ways of speaking about other people’s lives and other people’s priorities. One purpose of learning critical or analytic skills can be to come to a better understanding of the ways in which we speak about our experience, and to come to less partial ways of making sense of who we are, what we do, what we say, and how we relate to each other. We may never be able to come to an exact correspondence between what we say happens and what actually happens, but we can adopt critical strategies to identify those ways of speaking about the world that leave us and others more alienated than not from possibility and from each other.
(It is suggested that one helpful avenue to working this out might be developing an awareness of the power and attraction of the theme of the "elimination" of uncertainty in our lives.)
The “Standing Beside Me” Test
You could maybe use what might be called the "standing beside me" test for any thought or statement in which you speak of or represent or aim to influence another person's life.
If the person in question were to be standing here beside me:
If the answer to any of these questions is even a cautious "I don't actually know", then maybe I could reconsider the style and attitude of what I'm at.
Are there two sides to every story?
You are invited to consider that if we think that any situation can be reduced to a choice between only two positions then we misunderstand the complexities of the situation. Instead of there being two sides to every story, there may be as many sides to a story as there are possible tellers of the tale?
"It depends"
We live as particular people in particular circumstances, and we always-already experience changing cirumstances. Perhaps the most helpful maxim in making sense of anything is "it depends".
Can I approach what I do in terms of appropriateness-to-context instead of following rules? Rules often lead us to assume that we can think or do the same thing in different circumstances and still have it turn out right. If I listen to myself and listen to my situation, it very much depends on the cirumstance. What's appropriate in one situation may not be in another. Horses for courses. Sometimes it may well be appropriate to hang with thinking that might be otherwise unhelpful, if it means sharing company with people that you love, or leaving space for you to be less harsh with yourself.
What if I assumed that change is not something other than that which ordinarily happens?
"Necessity"?
Do claims of "necessity" tend to be rhetorical declarations for the purposes of justification and legitimation rather than the statements of "fact"? we often take them to be? Does "necessity" or "need" tend to be a way to convince ourselves or others that a particular course of action or a particular turn of events is "natural", or "inevitable", and therefore must be followed? Does "necessity" tend to be another way of claiming that there is no other way to think about a situation? Can thinking about experience in terms of "necessity" close down possibilities?
Is pain necessary to experience transformation?
Victor Frankl once remarked, 'that which is to give light must endure burning'. While a romantic soul may shout a resounding Yeah! you are invited to consider that another way to put this might be, 'those who are to give light often endure burning'. Are there people in this world who have not suffered great pain and who nonetheless give great light? If we make pain or suffering 'necessary' for transformation, does that make it possible that we might actively seek pain for ourselves or others to experience transformation?
Hypervigilance
When we embark on a journey of self-exploration and work to transform our relationships, is it possible to fall into the trap of hypervigilance? Can we sometimes consider unhelpful thinking or unhelpful behaviour as some sort of contamination that we need to eradicate (literally, 'uproot'), wipe from our system, bleach from our soul? If you find yourself doing that, it might be helpful to think in terms of attitude, to work towards being gentle with yourself. You don't have to think about what you do in terms of goals to be achieved, blots to be erased, gaps to be filled, or mistakes to correct. There are gentler ways to think about it. It doesn't have to be about trying to "eliminate" anything. Try keeping in mind, "attitude, not goal", and see how it goes.
Also, try thinking in terms of dominance rather than contamination, and see how that works for you. What kind of thinking or doing tends to dominate my life? If I can be more discerning about how I think and what I do, can I lessen the pull of unhelpful gravities of thinking and doing in my life? Can I be gentler with myself in doing so? It doesn't have to be all or nothing. Eyes forward, gentle heart.
Feeling?
Is it possible that uncertainty, confusion, anger, sadness, irritability, depression, resistance, conflict, or bodyslump all present me with opportunities for listening more carefully, more appropriately to what's going on with me and my situation? Can I enter into the feeling and turn with the experience? Can I sit with how I feel, dance with how I feel? Can I be more respectful of what is actually happening? Can I listen to myself, to my situation, without rushing in to tell myself or others what I think everything means?
Have I forgotten that I always-already make a difference? Can I beome more aware of the helpful differences I make and the differences I can make in my own life and in the lives of others?
Slowing down
Perhaps one of the more immediate ways to bring yourself away from slippery-slope gravities of rush and rant is to actively slow yourself down. When you eat, try taking 10 seconds to sit still before and after a meal. When you move around, try going slower than you normally would. When you feel a sense of urgency, try asking yourself to what extent that urgency might be self-generated. Think of as many ways as you can to slow yourself down, to become more accountable and responsible for how you experience time and space.