Tertiary Thinking

DAY 10:

Understanding where our thoughts come from can be a good way of finding out a bit more about ourselves and those around us. Many of our thought processes and behaviours are historical, which is often evidenced when younger generations hear sayings that not only their parents communicate but also their grandparents. This is often a nail in the coffin when it comes to getting our point across to a younger generation, our children. If you get lucky, you have their attention for a moment, only for the wrong, out dated words to roll out of our tongues and in turn watch as their eyes roll into the back of their heads.

Tertiary thinking is why we find ourselves thinking and repeating words that take us back to our own childhood upbringing. Something happens when we have our own kids, a tap is unlocked from a forgotten part of our psyche and the next thing we know, we sound like you know who….OUR P***ENTS.

This isn’t the only type of tertiary thinking however a more scary and detrimental strain is that which has been passed down generation after generation, dating back as far as the Victorians and beyond. Some of us might still hear the echoes of phrases like; Children should be seen and not heard; Empty vessels make the most noise; An eye for an eye….and so on. These sound like old fashioned catch phrases now but our thinking is still being shaped by the same societal traits we live by today. We work, shop, interact, ignore, escape from, dynamics within communities that are based on algorhythms from our distant past. We still struggle to create new versions of how we want the world to be. Man is still expected to be dominant, revered for stereotypical behaviours like; decisiveness, assertiveness, leadership, to be the provider - wow, did I just say that?! Yes, it’s still in our genetic make up until we decide to create a new version of man based on the reality that men are not all like this OR like this all of the time. We feel vulnerable, doubtful, over sensitive, worthless and most importantly totally unable to speak about these feelings to anyone - especially to other men.

I’m in danger of creating my own stereotypes and I do so in order to make the point, not because there are no men out there capable of expressing themselves openly and truthfully. But we do need to spread the word, we do need to talk more and understand that an old version of man is still very much attached to us until we cut the generational bungee chord.