What are you thinking?

WE have just heard a senator-judge lambasting a party of an impeachment proceeding with the shrill question full of daggers, “What were you thinking?” We may have different reactions to that incident, but one good thing it did was to remind me we have to be very careful with what and how we are thinking.

We have been taking this duty for granted, and so we are also reaping the just deserts—shallow, one-sided thoughts, biases, disorder, chaos, crisis, animosity, etc. We need to be more aware of this duty of taking care of our thinking.

When I interview young students, I can easily see the awkwardness of their thinking, full of self-consciousness, fallacies and all forms of illogic. Even their insincerity can be obvious. But all this is very understandable and is just a challenge to be faced.

But considering the older, supposedly mature people can be more distressing. I also often see twisted reasoning, sharply distorted by prejudices and all sorts of rash judgments, if not outright hatred, anger, envy, pride and arrogance.

Our thoughts and ideas are a powerful tool we have at hand. Being spiritual, they are poised to the infinite, its scope and range almost boundless. With them, we can carry the whole world within us. They can bring us to the essence of things, not just the externals and appearances, and even to the spirit and ethos that animate persons and events.

They are our way of reacting to whatever, and of building things. They are what make us human, distinct from the other creatures. They are a product of our intelligence and will, of our understanding of things and our freedom.

As such, they reflect reality and they also help construct reality. The drama in life takes place first in our mind before it is acted out. The kind of life and world depends to a large extent to the kind of thoughts we have.

Our thoughts carry a bagful of elements—impressions and perceptions, intentions and desires, concepts, judgments and reasoning, etc. I wonder if we are aware of these things and the grave responsibility we have to doing them properly.

Truth is we have the duty to make our thoughts conform to what is true, good and beautiful, what is fair, what love demands. We just cannot allow our thoughts to go anywhere and to depend on just anything. We just cannot allow them to tackle material realities only. We have to use them as much as possible to the fullest of their potentials.

Thus, they have to be properly guided and exercised, correctly sourced and inspired, suitably directed, purified and, in fact, pumped in with as much goodness as we can.

They have to be engaged with their proper objects, and ultimately and somehow constantly, they have to spring and end in God who is the author, pattern and end of what is true, good and beautiful, of what us just and fair.

We have to be wary of stray and capricious thoughts, or thoughts that are just at the mercy of our feelings or physical and biological conditions, or simply first and raw impressions.

Sad to say, this phenomenon is rampant, and hardly anything is done to correct it. People just feel free to think in any way, considering such practice as an expression of their personal freedom. So they just follow their instincts, and the trends and fads around, until they fall into addictions and even to insanity.

Insanity is not when one stops thinking. An insane person can think a lot, but so wrongly he can be detached from the most elementary level of reality.

We should not rely simply on common sense, because while it is always with us and is also useful, it cannot go deep enough to capture the real state of whatever issue or concern we may have at hand. We need to think more deeply and thoroughly.

Ideally, our thinking should always be accompanied by an abiding presence of God. We need to feel that presence, and our attitude should always be an eagerness to do what God may prompt us to think, judge, reason or act. In short, our thinking should be at the same time a kind of prayer, even if we are tackling mundane things.

When we think with God, we can have what St. James said about wisdom. We would have thoughts that are “chaste, then peaceable, modest, easy to be persuaded, consenting to the good, full of mercy and good fruits, without judging, without dissimulation.” (3,17)