Phrontistery

 A thinking place.

I am a thinker. Not a very productive one, but a thinker nevertheless. I think all the time about various things of consequence and otherwise to the point of ruminating at times.

Sometimes I discover something new and manage to make a note of it. More than once I have had some big revelations only to be forgotten moments later. Most of the times though, my thinking ends up straying and meandering until I have reached a completely different destination from the one I originally sought. I wonder if such thinking has any real value.

Then there are some people (annoying family members perhaps) who already know how to think and it blows my mind. I wonder, ‘how did they stumble upon this secret? Is there a secret camp where they teach you how to think? If so how do I apply for it?

That is where the word ‘Phrontistery’ comes in; and I wonder why it is no longer used in our present language. (I stumbled onto this word a few years back in a blog called “The Phrontistery.”)

Because the word means ‘thinking place’, it also implies that thinking should be a serious activity like playing the piano, studying or painting; something that requires a place, time and most importantly a purpose; a skill that might require time and effort to perfect. With practice, we can get better at the process of thinking and even come up with some useful ideas, solutions to different problems and situations in our lives. I think a lot of us ‘regular Joes’ attribute intellectual achievements of various people to their uncommon intelligence but maybe we have never tried to structure our thinking and practice it, like we would practice anything else.

Most of our childhood is spent in learning “what to think”, but not “how to think.” I am not really pointing fingers at the education system. Being a teacher myself, sometimes it can feel like the student might take a long time, even years to figure out the point if I don’t show them. But that might be because they don’t know how to think. A vicious circle. Time is something most people don’t have on their hands. We need people to finish learning skills as soon as possible. They need to be expert pianists, violinists, painters or whatever it is that they learn by the time they are 10 years old. They also need to be excellent at Math, Physics, Chemistry and all the other subjects by the time they are 18. But how do we measure this level of expertise? Examinations? If they’ve done well enough in their exams, they have gained sufficient expertise. But we must ask “Did they learn to think or were they just taught what to think? Either path allows them to take these exams. Which one would you be? The 18 year old who has gained “expertise” in all these areas or the 40 year old who has gained expertise in all these areas. To be honest, it’s hard to make a choice in today’s fast paced world. I want to say “first principles” – real expertise is always more valuable. But what does a loser like me (who’s just learning to think now) understand anyway. If the world moves fast, we either need to slow it down which is hard for just one person to do, or work according to it. So perhaps we should make some time on the side for the part that grows slowly. In the end, that might be the fastest way to grow.

Let’s take a look at our current environment as adults. Do we know ‘how to think’ or are we being told ‘what to think’? Social media (this blog post being a part of it, but how else can I get my thoughts across?) whispering (not subtly I might add) things in your ear about what opinion you should have on something. Even if it’s not social media, we still probably have many people around us at home and work constantly bombarding us with their opinions.These are things we cannot escape. This is the world we live in. But when we are in a real quandary, when it comes to facing our realities with courage and finding the best solution, how can we get away from the chaos and find a solution that’s truly right for us if we haven’t practiced the act of thinking? It would be like a person performing a musical instrument they have never tried before. When our solutions don’t work, we might feel like failures but what were the odds of success in the first place?

A phrontistery…..maybe we all need one. Something to think about… but where shall we think?