Thinking rationally – “if A, then ….?”

Over the past few months, my sister and I have been trying to figure out a very puzzling situation. We hash and rehash what has happened over and over again, trying to understand why things have gone the way they have. Almost every conversation about the matter has ended up with “What I don’t understand is ….”.

It occurs to me that we often get caught up in trying to figure out the thought patterns of others in an effort to understand. “So and so is not thinking rationally” we say. Basically though, when we say this, what we are really saying is that they don’t think like us. Our own thought pattern goes like this: “If A, then B”. However, we notice people whose thought pattern seems more like “If A, then X – or F – or 10 – or red” and we just can’t figure it out.. Of course, we assume that our thinking is rational and theirs is not! Quite a judgement.

What we have to accept is that we never will figure out other peoples’ logic. Time spent trying to do so is time wasted. We will never figure it out. The only thing to do is to accept people, their thoughts and actions as they are, to accept that that is the way things are. Once we do this, we are free to move on to determining what our own response will be. Now, whenever my sister and I speak about the issue, we stop when we get to “What I don’t understand is” and replace it with “That’s the way it is” and move the discussion to what we are going to do. As a result, we are moving forward rather than being stuck in a never-ending circle of trying to understand others.