Thinking others
Do you ever judge people before you inquire? Do you worry about what others think of you? If you believe you don’t care what others think — why did you bother to think it, or say it, at all?
So, “what the love” happens when we think about other people’s thoughts?
It is a widespread mind virus, and it comes in many shapes and colors. Thinking about others is not the problem — done consciously, it helps us connect. The trouble is the unconscious version: every uninvited thought about what someone else is thinking pulls us a little further from ourselves.
- The way we perceive the world — objects and people alike — follows from our present understanding of their nature.
(nature = the truth of a thing, its observable interconnection and interdependence — the laws of nature)
Perceptions reach us only through the pathways we have built — our “mind-ways.” Our emotions are touched only when a sensation vibrates strongly enough to pass through, or when it travels a path we already opened. Everything else gets stuck in the tangles of the mind, in the comfortable illusions we made because we never searched for the true nature of the thing.
A quiet longing
As a child, my inquiries were often shut down before they could open. The questions I most wanted to think through out loud were the ones that made the adults around me uneasy, so they went unanswered and sank back into my mind.
What if, back then, one person had simply thought it through with me — or at least not stopped me? Today inquiring is my daily fortune, and carving a path toward truth has become a kind of bliss. But I still wonder how much sooner it could have begun.
I also know the other extreme. I used to get an imaginative rush the moment I met someone — or merely heard about them. In a few seconds their whole life would sketch itself; in under a minute, an entire scenario of our meeting, vivid with space, mood, and detail, like a chapter of a book. It is the curse, and the gift, of a strong imagination. When I started writing fiction, twenty good pages came in under ten hours. That is what the same faculty becomes once it is turned, willingly, toward creation.
What it costs us
When we lose awareness of what is actually around us and feed only on our projections of other people, the thoughts run on by themselves — and our emotions soon follow. We leave the body and the present moment behind to chase a mirage. The irony: the person who lives in others’ imagined thoughts becomes most tense when the real interaction finally arrives.
There is a fork in how the mind fills the gaps about another person — and we choose which path to take.
The first is to believe whatever is said, by them or about them, and leave our understanding at the mercy of our assumptions. This is where manipulation begins — usually self-manipulation. A person convinces themselves of a story until forgetfulness makes the illusion look like reality — like selling desert land while picturing the forests that will grow and the rivers that will flow. Most people will buy anything within budget if it comes in their favorite color. Most people will accept any idea if it makes them feel their favorite emotion.
The second is to listen to intuition — the quieter voice from the depths of memory. Anyone can touch it in a moment of inner silence; few can hold the insight steady enough to dig with it. I once watched an apple tree while imagining its nature — how it draws water and minerals from the ground and carbon from the air, in the light of the sun. Since then I cannot tear off a living leaf. That is what deep, intuitive understanding does to you.
A practice: stop thinking about others
Here is the big question — how do you stop worrying about what other people think?
The only process you have to stop is thinking about others first. Stop that, and the worry has nothing to grow from.
My suggestion is to take the extreme on purpose. For a couple of weeks, do not think about anyone. Whenever you catch a thought drifting toward another person — family, friends, colleagues, a stranger from a video — gently neutralize it and return your attention to yourself. It will not turn you cold; it is only an experiment to see how your mind works and how it interacts with your emotions.
- The single action required: place awareness just within your body — on your sensations and emotions. Whenever a thought reaches for someone else’s projection, you bring it back to yourself.
In the beginning you may notice your sense of your own future actions sharpen, and — oddly — your real relationships improve. Because you are improving the way you think, and creating better possibilities around the people you actually meet.
Then, thinking of others consciously
Once that settles, you can think about others on purpose. Conscious thinking about another person is really about emotional understanding. We cannot connect emotionally with someone who hasn’t had a similar experience at a similar intensity — what is trauma to one person is a faint ripple to another. But we can explore an emotion we lack by placing ourselves, with care, where it lives in someone else’s life.
It helps to know the extremes of the emotional spectrum. At one end, the person who never lets others’ emotions reach them; at the other, the person who craves nothing else. Locating those poles helps us find the range we are comfortable in — and see the architecture of our own mind clearly enough to improve how it behaves in uncomfortable moments.
We are both child and parent in our being. Teacher and student in our life. Conscious and unconscious in our minds — aware and unaware of something, all the time, everywhere we are.