During my +2 days, my Mathematics teacher used to write a problem on the board and turn to us and ask “How to think?”
We used to make fun of the question.
Fast forward 20 Years, here I am pondering on the same question. Over the last few years, this question has been coming back to me regularly. How to think? can be a tricky one at times.
How to think is a very genuine question we don’t usually ask ourselves. In the Indian system, we have been bought up with a tradition of not asking why, what and how? to our elders. At home, when parents tell us to do something and we ask a logic for it, we get back the answer “Our elders said so” and at school when we ask a question, we get a reply “So, you think you are intelligent eh?”. All these have deep impact on our thinking and we are continuing to follow the same in today’s world.
What we need to focus on and make effort is to change is the way we approach the questioning part. Asking questions is the way we need to think. What we need to accept is that we do not have answers to all the questions we have, and usually, the easiest way is to conclude. Instead of concluding, when we start questioning, many things open up and the complete approach to dealing with life changes.
So, the next time someone asks How to think?, the answer is Questioning.
Questioning is an art and it needs a lot of practice.