Just a Thought

I have more time to think than I used to. I like that time. It’s generally when my best creative ideas are hatched. Lately I’ve been thinking about how little it seems people do that. Think that is.

There are a multitude of examples. My latest personal favorite being the Republican Senator from Ohio who last week claimed that FDR’s New Deal caused the Great Depression. Didn’t he think to check a history book to see when exactly the Depression started and when FDR came into office before he spoke? And then there was yesterday, with those editors at the NY Post and that political cartoon on the stimulus bill. Can they really be surprised at the controversy over this?

Maybe it’s my mother always ingraining in us growing up to stop and think before we speak. Maybe it was the first boss who told me when I got into advertising sales that I was paid to think. I happen to think, thinking is important. I also happen to think we don’t seem to put enough value on it anymore.

No, it appears we’re all too busy running to do something, to remember to think.

We value being busy. When we are busy it is assumed we are accomplishing something. The value is on the doing. And if we are doing, it is assumed we accomplish and if we accomplish, well, there must be something in the form of tangible revenue that has now hit the bottom line. And really, isn’t that what we have come to value most?

Rodin captured the act of thinking in his statue. A moment of reflection and quiet to let ones thoughts roam and let the creativity flow. I wonder what would happen if we all stopped more to do that. If we paused and said, let’s think a minute before we do that or say that. Is that me thinking or my sharpened pencil thinking as I slash another line item in this budget? What great new idea might be ready to burst through if we took a bit more time to think?

That’s what I’ve been thinking. Just a thought.