The Power of Thinking

 　　Some say, "We're so busy now we don't even have time to think."

　　Many people want to succeed, are impatient for success, and expect tenfold returns for every bit of effort they put in. In this restless state, they haven't stopped to seriously consider what mindset they should have and what steps they should take to do things. How do you grow something from small to large? Some believe it depends on luck and opportunity, some on connections and resources, and others on family and background—but these are all external factors.

　　I find this very frightening. Think about it: behind every success story, isn't the power of thought driving it forward?

　　One day in the 1660s, Newton was sitting under an apple tree on his estate, deep in thought, when an apple hit him squarely on the forehead. Instantly, Newton was struck by inspiration, as if waking from a dream, and discovered the "law of universal gravitation." Although some say this is just a "white lie," who can deny Newton's thought process regarding universal gravitation?

　　In a private school classroom, an old gentleman was intently lecturing on the *Great Learning* when a young boy in the back row suddenly stood up and rattled off a dozen questions. The old gentleman was speechless and blushed. This inquisitive and questioning boy later went on to conduct in-depth research in astronomy, mathematics, history, geography, and other subjects, becoming a renowned writer and thinker. His name was Dai Zhen.

　　A person asked a philosopher, "You think every day, but your thoughts are invisible and intangible. Can you let us feel the weight of your thoughts?" "Of course," the philosopher replied. To prove that his thoughts had weight, the philosopher conducted an experiment: he lay flat on a seesaw-like scale. Incredibly, when the philosopher thought, the scale tilted towards his head. The philosopher said that when a person thinks, wisdom, happiness, success, and truth all tilt towards them. The person, unable to explain this phenomenon, consulted a scientist. Scientists explain it this way: when a person is thinking, the brain needs more blood, thus increasing its weight, and the seesaw naturally tilts towards the brain.

　　Thinking is a process of "retrieval." The more concepts are retrieved, the higher their priority is assigned by the brain, making them easier to retrieve. Thinking about a concept simultaneously increases the "priority" of both the concept itself and related concepts, thereby increasing the utilization rate of those concepts.

　　Alfred Wegener, a famous German meteorologist, was hospitalized one day when his gaze fell on a world map on the wall. He began to look at it with great interest. Suddenly, he noticed that the right-angled bulge at the eastern end of Brazil on the west coast of the Atlantic Ocean seemed to fit perfectly with the concave Gulf of Guinea on the east coast of Africa. Furthermore, almost every concave bay on the Brazilian coast had a corresponding bulge on the African coast. "Could it be that the continents were originally a single piece, and then, for some reason, split into several scattered pieces?" Driven by this question, Wegener finally proposed the "continental drift theory" in 1912, causing a sensation in the entire geographical community.

　　Thinking is a wondrous thing; it can be boundless and expansive, or it can get so narrow that it can't even turn around. Sometimes, the mind seems trapped in a circle, with an inescapable headband, even Sun Wukong (the Monkey King) is helpless against it. The quagmire of fixed mindsets is the self-imposed isolation of thought; the mind cannot break free, and ideas cannot see the light of day.

　　A wealthy merchant, to avoid the chaos of war, disguised himself as a commoner and hid a priceless painting in the handle of an old umbrella to take back to his rural hometown. Unexpectedly, while resting in a village along the way, the umbrella disappeared. At this moment, the wealthy merchant remained calm and, after careful examination, discovered that his bag was still intact. He concluded that the person who took the umbrella was not a professional thief with the secret of the handle, but rather a local villager who liked to take advantage of others. He then decided to rent a place in the area and start an umbrella-trading business: old for new, no extra charge. Sure enough, the old umbrella he had been longing for was soon delivered to his door. The wealthy merchant's recovery of his masterpiece was not due to haste, but to wisdom, and this wisdom came entirely from calm and deliberate thought.

　　One of the most important abilities a person can have is to train their brain, to fill it with knowledge, to enable it to think, to allow our brains to take flight. This flight actually has two levels: one is that when you see something abstract, you should try to make it concrete, and conversely, when you see something concrete, you should try to make it abstract.

　　This allows us to maintain clear and independent thinking at all times, thus forming our own judgments, rather than blindly following others. Perhaps true wisdom lies in not being presumptuous.