HOW often do you think?

I’m not being facetious. I mean, how often do you truly contemplate a subject, inspect it from a different, unfamiliar perspective? How often do you change your opinion after giving a subject consideration?

Be honest with yourself.

If you’re like me, perhaps not as often as you might believe.

We are so conditioned, so comfortable in our attitudes that we reach for pre-assembled thoughts, often somebody else’s. Ones we’ve used before and know serve us adequately.

Henry Ford said: ‘Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.’ You hear it in the cliches we use. Much easier to reach for a prefabricated metaphor than to originate one of our own.

We use them because we’ve heard other people use them and we like them.

The same is true of opinions. Religion, politics, football teams, music. How often do we follow a certain path because it’s the one our parents’ trod, or it’s the one down which we find acceptance by the crowd?

We become comfortable – some might say dogmatic – in our opinions. If somebody challenges us, either peacefully or confrontationally, we ready ourselves for a fight. It’s an attack on our ego.

So I ask, how often do we say, no, actually, I’m going to listen to what this other person has to say about the world. They might have an interesting point to make that will alter my own perception of things.

Or not.

But the point is, it’s important to at least consider others’ views even if you don’t agree with them. Je suis Charlie and all that.

Invariably it’s society’s outsiders who dare to offer original thoughts. The people who ignore the expectations society has of them.

We label them weird for challenging the status quo. It’s only with hindsight that we acknowledge their different perspective was a valid one.

Perhaps you don’t want to think about things. Doing so can be painful. It requires a certain curiosity and some people are happy to float through life untroubled by life’s bigger questions.

Thinking should be taught in school. It is something the author and thinker Edward de Bono has advocated for years. He coined the term ‘lateral thinking’ and his books on the subject of altering the way we think are mind-expanding in the proper sense.

I’ll leave you with the words of the late Steve Jobs, the genius behind Apple.

He had this to say: ‘Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.’ As other people’s thoughts go, that pretty much covers it.