Hobbies

 by: Steve Gillman

New thoughts can come from taking a new perspective on things. One way to do that is to challenge the assumptions that exist. For example, is love really a feeling of desire or attachment? This is a common assumption, but what if we challenge this?

New Thoughts on Love

Desire and attachment can be strong feelings, and they are often called love in certain contexts. However, attachment can be for bad reasons too, right? Desire too can come from less than noble places. What is an alternative definition of love?

How about a recognition of value? Seeing the inherent value in a person, like the beauty you see in a painting or hear in a melody. You do not need to be attached or even desirous of beauty to enjoy it. You just have to recognize it. The enjoyment that you take in another's existence then could be a definition of love. At least the emotion.

Love is more than an emotion though. How much love does a mother have for her children if she feels fond towards them, but doesn't feed them? Love in this context has to include action, doesn't it?

This points up the real problem with defining concepts like love. There are seven or eight or perhaps a hundred things we want to communicate. They are each different, yet we have just one word for them. Maybe rather than re-defining love we need to create a dozen new words. Now there's an area for some new thoughts.

Random New Thoughts

Another way to have new thoughts is to just look for new ideas to replace old ones. Then you expand on the new idea, to see what value you might find in it. Here are some examples of new thoughts, without expanding on them (help yourself).

- Why do we encourage uniformed people to vote? Maybe it's better to encourage people NOT to vote, unless they are willing to educate themselves on the issues.

- Is multi-tasking really a sign of efficiency? Maybe the fact that we need to be so busy just to get what we want shows that our actions aren't effective enough.

- Why can't we pay less for a surgeon who kills more people on the operating table? Why not recognize that there are better and worse doctors, have that information available, and pay accordingly?

- How about wonder instead of faith? Faith is just believing without reason. Wonder is to marvel at the world and accept that we don't have reasons or explanations for everything.

Finally, what if our level of creativity, and ability to have new thoughts isn't just something that is set at birth. What if it is a systematic process, one that may not be recognized by those who use it, but can be identified and copied? All of us can train ourselves to have creative new thoughts.