critical thinking.

 

"may your choices reflect your hopes rather than your fears." nelson mandela. 

i bought my current vehicle, a twelve-year-old 'highlander', because the sales-person told me they're the preferred vehicle of the taliban. i could not stop thinking about that. terrorists love 'toyota highlanders'. i didn't have the car checked by my mechanic, didn't even look underneath for rust. i just kept envisioning some axxhole standing up through the moonroof holding an AK47 with absolutely no concern that the car might break down or get stuck in the sand.

years ago i bought a bed off 'facebook marketplace' solely because it's adjustable and even has a massage function. when the lady who was selling the bed told me it vibrates i inanely said that i've always wanted a good vibrator. she just kinda looked at me strangely. and after purchasing the thing i've virtually never even adjusted it, and frankly i find the massage function mildly irritating. the only time i ever used either function was during the height of the pandemic, after weeks of isolation. once or twice i found myself raising and lowering both ends incessantly while simultaneously switching through the different massage modes.

i bought a house once because my dad told me it was a bad idea.

critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to decision-making. suffice it to say, that's never been my style. a friend recently remarked that my decision-making style more closely resembles a squirrel crossing the street. it was of course a valid point.

having said all that, i must add in my own defence that some of the worst decisions i've ever made somehow proved rather miraculously to change my life in the best of possible ways. i wrote a book a few years ago that cost me some friends. it was really a dumb decision to write it and even dumber to publish. and yet it has proved to be the book i'm most proud of having written and even prouder for having published it, (for sale tomorrow at the wakefield market.) returning from india after many years, for that matter, and settling in wakefield, where i'd never ever been, were terrible decisions that i'm so very fortunate to have made. 

the worst of all of course was the decision, made many many moons ago, to leave a promising and lucrative career with 'canadian press' to pursue a new interest in something really flakey called meditation. it just seemed obvious at the time, a no-brainer really, in spite of having exactly zero money. i reasoned that the value of directly experiencing buddha-consciousness, christ-consciousness, krishna-consciousness would be priceless. and having spectacularly succeeded or fruitlessly failed in that endeavour, i can only say that it remains the absolute best of all my terrible decisions.

"there are no wrong turns, only unexpected paths." mark nepo.