I’ve been thinking lately about how difficult it can be to know which of our thoughts are actually ours.
Not in the obvious sense. Of course I have my own opinions. I know what I like, what I believe, what I agree with and what I don’t.
At least, I think I do.
Every now and then I come across an idea that makes me stop and wonder: Did I arrive at this myself, or have I simply heard it often enough that it now feels like mine?
A slightly unsettling thought when you consider how many opinions you have accumulated over the years.
I suspect most of us do this more than we realise.
We grow up around other people’s ideas long before we have the ability to question them. We learn what our families think, what our friends think, what people like us are supposed to think. Some of these things are said explicitly. Others are just implied. We pick them up from the atmosphere around us.
And perhaps we learn something else at the same time: which thoughts make us feel closer to people, and which ones might create distance.
I notice this most when I disagree with someone I care about.
There is something very different about thinking, I don’t agree with this, when the other person is a stranger, compared with when it is someone whose opinion matters to you.
With a stranger, it can simply be a disagreement.
With someone close to us, it can feel so much more personal.Sometimes we don’t even notice that we have started editing ourselves. We soften an opinion. We leave something unsaid. We decide that perhaps it isn’t worth getting into. Or we do that very adult thing where we say, “Interesting,” while internally having written a seventeen-page rebuttal.
None of this necessarily feels dishonest. Sometimes it is simply part of being considerate. But I wonder where the line is. At what point does being adaptable become losing track of what you actually think? And perhaps even more difficult: how would we know?
I wonder how much belonging influences our thinking
We tend to think of belonging as an emotional need and independent thinking as an intellectual one, as though they belong to separate parts of us.
But I’m not sure they are that separate.
If belonging matters to us—and of course it does—then it makes sense that the possibility of losing it might influence what we are willing to question.
Imagine discovering that you no longer agree with something your family has always believed.
Or that your friends have become very certain about an issue you feel much less certain about.
Or that you have changed your mind about something that once felt central to who you were.
The difficult part may not be the new idea itself.
It might be what the new idea means for your relationships.
There is a particular discomfort in realising that your thinking has moved somewhere the people around you haven’t.
You can still love them. You can still feel close to them. But suddenly there is something you cannot quite share in the same way.
And I wonder if this is one reason certainty can feel so appealing. Being certain can be socially comforting. You know where you stand. You know who agrees with you. You don’t have to sit in the awkward space of I’m not sure yet.
Sometimes I think we underestimate how uncomfortable that space is. There is a huge amount of pressure to have an opinion. On politics. Parenting. Relationships. Therapy. Food. Sleep. Screens. Whether people should have screens. Whether people who have screens are ruining society.
Apparently, we are all expected to have a position. And preferably one that fits neatly into a sentence.
The strange thing about changing your mind
We often praise people for thinking for themselves, but I wonder if we sometimes make independent thinking sound much simpler than it is.
It is easy to imagine the independent thinker as someone who stands apart from everyone else and follows their own judgement. But what if I disagree with everyone around me simply because I don’t want to be like them? That doesn’t feel particularly independent. I’m still organising my thinking around the group. I’ve just chosen the opposite position.
So perhaps thinking independently isn’t really about agreeing or disagreeing. Maybe it has more to do with being able to pause long enough to ask yourself what you actually think.
And that sounds simple until you try it. Because sometimes what we think is mixed up with what we fear.
Or what we want other people to think of us.
Or what we have always believed about ourselves.
Or what would be easier for our relationships.
Or what would make us feel like we belong.
And sometimes, annoyingly, we don’t know which is which.
What happens when we change?
I’ve always found the idea of changing your mind slightly uncomfortable. Not because I think changing your mind is wrong. Quite the opposite. I hope I change my mind about things. I hope I learn.
But there is something unsettling about looking back at an earlier version of yourself and realising that you no longer agree with them.
What do we do with that?
We often want to make the story neat afterwards. I used to think that because I didn’t know better. Now I understand. Lovely. Very satisfying. Almost suspiciously satisfying.
Real change isn’t always that tidy. Sometimes the old version of us had a point. Sometimes the new version does too. Sometimes we simply see something differently because we have lived a little longer.
And perhaps we don’t need to decide that one version was completely wrong in order to allow another version to exist. Maybe changing your mind doesn’t always mean that your former self was foolish. Maybe it just means you have changed.
Perhaps belonging needs a little more room
This makes me wonder whether we have been thinking about belonging in the wrong way.
Perhaps belonging isn’t necessarily about finding people who think like us. Maybe it is about finding relationships in which we are allowed to think differently and still remain connected. There is something quite reassuring about being around people who agree with you.
But there is something else, perhaps more valuable, about being able to say:
I don’t see it that way.
Or:
I’m not sure.
Or even:
I used to think that, but I don’t anymore.
And knowing that the relationship can withstand it.
That last part might be harder than it sounds. I don’t think we can ever completely separate ourselves from the people around us. And I’m not sure we should want to. Other people influence us in ways that can be wonderful. They introduce us to ideas we would never have encountered on our own. They challenge us. They change us.
Some of our best thinking probably happens because someone else put an idea in front of us that we would never have found by ourselves.
So maybe the point isn’t to become completely independent of other people’s thinking. Maybe it is simply to become curious about the influence they have on us. To notice when we are agreeing because something feels true, and when we might be agreeing because it feels safer. To notice when we are disagreeing because we have thought something through, and when we might simply be trying to prove that we are our own person. And perhaps to become a little more comfortable with not knowing.
Because I suspect there is a strange relationship between belonging and independent thinking. We may need other people in order to become ourselves. And we may sometimes need enough security in those relationships to risk becoming someone slightly different from who we were yesterday.
Maybe belonging isn’t about never having to change.
Maybe it’s about knowing you don’t have to stay the same just to keep your place.
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