Self-Improvement: I Write To Think Better.
Writing is a manifestation of our thought processes.
I write a lot daily. Some pieces of my writing become a public good when it is published. A majority of those are hidden in my journal. Treat them as the skeletons in the closet, if you may. Those writing are hidden in private because they are extraction of my thoughts, emotions, and frustrations in their raw form.
In short, they are ugly. Some snippets of those writing can be rough and vulgar too. It would be best to keep them to myself.
And that begets the question.
Why bother to write if they are not meant to be for public consumption?
That is because I wanted to examine my thought processes in the future. I think a lot. I often wonder why I do something, like reading a book on retirement. I will question if retirement is a feasible idea or an experiment that has failed the baby boomers. If so, why. I will then start researching materials confirming or disproving my thought processes when I have time to spare.
I needed a way to refine my thought processes, and writing is the best form of tangible reference I can keep going back to.
It builds strength and intensity of an argument based on the premise of interest constructed in my head.
One topic caught my attention recently, and that is the issue of inequality. That topic is spread all over social media, mainstream media, and the internet by different people globally. The battle cry for eliminating inequality in our society is as much as solving the climate change problem.
And I started wondering. Is inequality the real issue at hand? What is it about inequality that makes it bad? I went home and scribbled inequality into my journal and gave myself time to reflect on my thought processes.
My initial thought processes were mainstream. Yup, inequality is bad because people are the lower end of the rug get squeezed.
Inequality creates social tension and pressure.
I just kept scribbling on and on why it is bad for us.
And then, I realized one thing.
Examining inequality alone is insufficient to understand people’s resentment. People are unhappy with discriminatory practices due to unequal opportunities. And that has nothing to do with inclusion from merit.
People resent inequality of all forms, but that cannot be the complete picture. Let me explain.
If I come up first in an assessment and you are fifth, yet you are promoted while I am not — Please justify why this so.
Resentment drops when validity is presented and accepted. The reverse is true.
This is a form of inequality that we do not like because it disadvantaged us when it should not be in the first place.
That does not mean we write off the concept of inequality totally.
Let us say that we inject the ideology of merit into the barrel of inequality. We want to distinguish ourselves from the rest of the pack if we have worked hard for it, and we have the results to show.
If my high school exempts the top 15 students from remedial classes in the afternoon, and I am within the top 15 — Good for me. I qualify to bum around in the afternoon while others are slogging away in class.
This is a manifestation of inequality that I want because I worked hard for it. From this perspective, I embrace this form of inequality that is rooted in the demonstration of merit.
Of course, the hardest part is for people to understand that. Having to enjoy the fruits without labor is a Utopian pursuit many prefer to entertain.
This is a snapshot of my scribbles and reflections on the topic of inequality. I write to see what I am thinking about. I turn my invisible thoughts into visible words so I can debate against my thinking in ink.
That way, I learned to examine the breadth and depth over topics that interest me, whether they hold water or are filled with loopholes.
Of course, I want to write, to write better.
But over and above that, I want to think better.
Writing my thoughts allows me to do that, even if they are hidden from the public.
Aldric
About the Author:
As a content contributor, I write my observations from daily life and my business exposure.
Because our life experience is the bedrock of our unique perspectives.