Thought for the week: Judy Clinton blows hot and cold

‘To watch the contents of one’s mind can be an uncomfortable business.’

‘And then I stopped myself. The fact of it was that the child looked perfectly happy.’ | Photo: Robert Nelson / Unsplash.

It was a bitterly cold day. Before leaving the house I togged up with multiple layers of clothing, hat, gloves and scarf, and set out looking like some kind of arctic explorer, just as I used to when, dressed up by my mother, I went out into a Glaswegian winter day.

I passed a young woman pushing a toddler in an uncovered buggy. The child’s hands were bare, she wore no hat, and her feet, clad only in thin socks, stuck out into the open air. The young woman – I presumed her mother – wasn’t wearing any gloves or hat either; her coat was wide open and beneath it, over her trunk, she seemed to be only wearing a light t-shirt.

I watched my critical and judgmental inner dialogue: what kind of mother would go out into these conditions with a child so inadequately dressed? She must be so ignorant of appropriate childcare. And then I stopped myself. The fact of it was that the child looked perfectly happy, her hands weren’t blue, and neither did the mother look remotely concerned about how cold either of them were. It would seem that they didn’t feel the cold. And here I was dressed up like a pass-the-parcel still feeling chilly. How different we are!

This set me thinking. Yes, clearly, we are all very different in any number of ways. My guess is that this young woman’s mother was also unconcerned about going out into cold conditions without a lot of clothing, just as I know my grandmother was very keen on wearing lots of it. Is it therefore possible that our very biology is affected by conditioned behaviour? A step beyond that, is it also possible that our thinking is so conditioned that we never question whether it has any basis in reality? I thought about my initial condemnation of this young mother, which was based purely on my own conditioned thinking and behaviour, followed by my negative judgment of that which was different from it.

I think of the furore of accusations and counter-accusations that are rife in our political world and elsewhere at present. I wonder whether those involved have ever stepped back and questioned where they are truly coming from when they loudly press for their own agendas. Like me with this small watching of my own conditioned (and in this case erroneous) thinking, might it not be possible that such strongly felt views are just not accurate?

To watch the contents of one’s mind can be an uncomfortable business – watching my processes in the above example certainly was – but it feels so very necessary. We’ve been taught any number of things over the years and can hold to them so tenaciously. But are they true?

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