Yesterday I was thinking about traditions. But let’s shift focus a bit.

I wonder how many of us realize just how quickly our brain functions — and you might just as well read that as — how quickly our brain jumps ahead of us!!!!!!

The graphic above is the perfect illustration of what I mean. We don’t have to wait for everything to be written out, or spoken, for our brain to “think” that it knows what’s coming. A few lines on a page and from random lines our brain constructs meaning, or fiction, fact or fallacy.

There is no way to stop the intelligence within us from doing such things — but it’s a helpful life skill if we become aware, and keep ourselves aware of the fact that our brain doesn’t always wait on us to intelligently process what it has witnessed before making up our mind.

In legal settings, in social settings, between partners, we do this all the time. And that’s not even talking about the times that we see something and decide “that’s not for me,” and do something we were warned against.

Brains are tricky little buggers. It’s as if they have a mind of their own. Perhaps if we were raised as “law abiding” citizens we might have a different level of control over what conclusions our brain jumps to — but maybe not. Sometimes we just want to be bad, or we just want to be different.

Recently, I was struck by this quotation, that when we don’t want to be interesting — or don’t want to have other people value us — then we are free to be, think, act, as we choose. There’s an Old Testament verse that speaks to this same idea: “where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint” (Proverbs 29:18).

If there are no rules people will do whatever they want. Some choosing actions that are beneficial to themselves and others, some choosing actions that cause problems for others and for themselves, and some acting in ways that actually end their lives — and/or the lives of others — for reason, or for lack of reason.

Yeah — we see what we want to see. Would that more people wanted to see beauty in the world.

Take care for the day and I”ll chat again tomorrow. (and some day I’ll stop hitting the double quote key instead of the apostrophe key.). :-)