Thinking Out Loud

During my monthly Whole Thoughts retreat, I thought about how much of my processing is done in solitude, and made a point to meet up with a friend I hadn't seen for awhile. We sat between a coffee shop and a busy trail, me knitting and her weaving in ends, and talked about anything and everything for three hours and it was a deeply satisfying encounter.

I recognize change as necessary for growth. I've always wanted to be right (as contrasted with not wanting to be wrong, completely different thing) and part of that has to include the willingness to change if confronted with a previously undiscovered error of thinking. I read and I journal and I listen to others - but there's another element in that process.

A necessary element of developing ideas and ideologies is being able to safely discuss those thoughts with someone else. Change is a process, and an idea (optimally) goes through several drafts before it's enacted. In order to do that properly, I need books by and conversations with both people who think the way that I thought, as well as people who think ahead of me, in the direction I'm wanting to go. People whose horror at change will ensure that I'm changing for the right reasons, and people who'll show me my options moving forward.

But during my childhood and teens, I didn't have that. My media was carefully regulated and the only person I had to discuss things with was my mom, and ideas had to be very carefully vetted and polished up before being presented to her, since my speculation was taken as a request for approval (not an unnatural response from a parent to a child). I appreciate having had someone in my life whose threshold for rebellion and general nonsense was significantly lower than mine, but that's only one aspect of a well-rounded perspective.

Then as an adult when I met people I felt I could theorize with, I was old enough that everyone else was already past that stage of development and saw me as immature and inexperienced - which I was, in a way, but not by choice. It's a step that can't be skipped and I took it as soon as I could.

I still generally experience the first shock of a new concept internally, but now that I know how important group processing is, I also build that in as much as I can. Because when thinking out loud, it's good to have people who can think back with me.

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