The Differences Between Useless Thoughts and Thinking

The only thing I know now is that I know nothing.

While it may seem like a style-statement of a 21st century wannabe thinker who has come to write here right after reading Socrates’ quotes, it isn’t!

And I am going to give you some evidence:

  • I was sure the bus would fall off the cliff. It didn’t.
  • I was sure the airplane would crash that day. It didn’t!
  • I was sure someone at home had died that day. No one did!
  • I was sure I had killed someone with my car that day. I hadn’t(?)
  • I was sure I would get rejected on that application. I didn’t!
  • I was sure I would get that fellowship. I didn’t!
  • I was sure that girl liked me. She didn’t!
  • I was sure the other girl didn’t care about me. She did!

Although I have written ‘I was sure’ up there, I was actually CONVINCED about all those things. C-O-N-V-I-N-C-E-D.

I was convinced the bus would crash, and I took my ID out from my bag and almost threw it out of the bus window that day — until something else intervened! (I will come to that something else in a while.)

All those ‘sure’ up there are based on my knowledge of myself or the world at some time and place. Those knowledge came to me through my thoughts. I even called them ‘gut-feelings’. But all of them turned out to be false. That’s why I say:

  • The only thing I know now is that I know nothing and
  • SOME THOUGHTS ARE USELESS. Garbage.

The examples given above had immediate outcomes, that’s why it was easy for me to validate their truth. I fall off my chair wondering how many of those knowledge and thoughts I have been breeding inside me whose outcomes take time to come.

Here I have to undertake a difficult task:

While I say some thoughts are useless, I will try to understand thoughts through thoughts.

Read the rest of the story here.