"Are you really you, or are you what people have told you you are?"
L. Buscaglia

Is it possible to learn a lesson so well that you cannot remember ever learning it?

Can a skill become so ingrained that its origin is forgotten?
How about walking and talking? How about reading and writing?
And what about thinking? That’s right thinking.
That thing that you are doing right now: How about thinking?

Can you remember where you learned to think?
Can you remember who taught you to think?
Do you remember what they taught you to think?
Is what you think what you choose to think or is it what someone else taught you to think?
Can you rethink what you think and teach yourself not to think as you were taught to think,
but instead think as an independent thinker?

Can you remember when you first thought of yourself as an independent thinker?
Who was it that taught you to think of yourself as an independent thinker and then asked you to think independent thoughts?
Did he or she think of himself or herself as an independent thinker?
And who was it that taught him or her how to think as an independent thinker?
How did he or she teach you to be an independent thinker without you thinking as he or she does?

Are you an independent thinker who only thinks like other independent thinkers or are you truly an independent thinker who thinks that you think just like everybody else?

Is it possible to learn a lesson so well that you cannot remember ever learning it?

Originally written - February 26, 1996