Just Some Thoughts

I have a number of thoughts about the human condition. Some of these you might agree with, some you might not. This is just one of them...

IBM has a ubiquitous sign, it allegedly hangs in prominent places in every building they own and occupy. It contains just one word:

THINK

I looked into this and found that a Google search on "ibm think" would lead me to this:


"THINK was a one-word slogan developed by IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, Sr. It appeared in IBM offices, plants and company publications in the 1920s and in the early 1930s began to take precedence over other slogans in IBM. It eventually appeared in wood, stone and bronze, and was published in company newspapers, magazines, calendars, photographs, medallions -- even New Yorker cartoons -- and it remained for years the name of IBM's employee publication. You can still find echoes of Watson's motto in the brand name of IBM's popular notebook computers: the ThinkPad."
[http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/vintage/vintage_4506VV2024.html]


It is something I believe few of us do, or do regulary. We tend to be reactive and we also tend to be emotional. This in spite of constant admonitions to:

Think before you speak.
Think about the consequences of what you are about to do.
And, of course, the one I (and, perhaps, you also) heard most often thoughout my youth:

"What were you thinking?"

We don't do that thinking thing often, do we? I even seek out hobbies where I can avoid thinking. Golf is one of them. My best rounds have happened while I was seemingly on auto-pilot. That is, I did no real thinking about what I was doing; just letting the muscle memory do its job while I paid little attention to what was happening. It was only after the round was over that I realized what I had accomplished. So don't get me wrong, sometimes not thinking is the better choice.

And, yet, one must think about it before choosing one or the other. Mustn't one?