Shapeless Thoughts

I’m going to go back a bit in time. Back in 1997 artist Ray Charles and his backup singers recorded a song. I’m not real sure of the title, but one line in the song made a deep impression on me. That line was; Just a shapeless thought in the shadow of my mind. That one line made me wonder just how many of our thoughts lay there in the shadows forever waiting for us to shape and develop them? It has always been difficult for me to find that one thought and develop it. My mind has always been full of those thoughts hiding in the shadows and all waiting for attention. I guess my mind is like a packet of seeds each seed waiting to be sown. If you are a regular reader of this blog, I’m sure you have wondered why these essays have so many different themes. Many have started with only a one or two word headline, but that is the way those thoughts are put into my head. It usually takes only those few words to pull the rest of the essay out of the shadows. It seems my mind works much like the hard drive on my computer that needs only a few key words to start a search. Each of us has been given the gift of thought, but like our outward appearance we are all different. No two of us look alike or think alike. I’ve found that most of us need something to trigger those thoughts and bring them out of the shadows. Sadly some find that trigger harder to pull than others. Sadly the goal of organized religions is to control our thinking and our thought process. My belief is it is far more important to teach people how to think, than what to think. The goal of education should be creating a desire to find and use OUR thoughts each has hidden in the shadows, to find and share those thoughts for the good of all. Much of today’s thinking of our kids is directed towards letting others do the thinking and only standing by and watching other’s thoughts happen. Seldom do we find great ideas coming from the middle of the flock. Most often we find those ideas coming from the Geeks, the breakaways, the loners, the thinkers, and the ones that will not allow the distractions from others to get in the way of their thinking. Then many times those ideas are returned to the group for fine tuning. The genius is the one that can see those thoughts in the shadows that no one else has ever seen before. Our God has given each of us untold numbers of those thoughts hidden in the shadows of our mind, but each of us must have a desire to find and use those thoughts. As I talk to people, it makes me sad to find so many unwilling to open the lid of that treasure chest of thought that each of us has been given.