"What do you think?"
And I don't mean, "I dyed my hair. What do you think of it?" or "Pespsi or coca-cola. What do you think?"

But it would be nice if someone asked my opinion about something beyond materialistic things or wanted me to answer a thought-provoking question instead of mindless questions concerning all the drama in their lives. Half the questions we ask each other don't amount to anything.

How nice it would be if someone asked, "What do you think about the state of the world?" "I recently read (name of spiritual book), what do you think?" or just simply, "What DO you think about?" And then how nice it would be if they actually asked and WANTED a valide response.

My experience shows me that many, many people ask questions (ask for someone's opinion) only because they want an opportunity to voice their OWN opinion, not because they want a new perspective on a subject. Why even play these games? If someone asks for an opinion but doesn't truely care about hearing it, why don't they just skip the mind games and say what THEY want to say and not waste the other person's time?

What do you think?

If we "know that we know", are we aware of WHAT we know? Feeling something, knowing that something is there, is different from having the wisdom to recognize it or understand it or utilize it. We "know" many things, but do not understand them.

When babies enter the world, they learn through observation. They "know" an adult is doing something, but do not understand the compexity. So they observe and mimic until understanding comes.

We are still in an infancy stage- and have kept ourselves from entering childhood and gaining more understanding because we refuse to incorporate and utilize what we observe. We refuse to believe what we observe.

A baby may observe an adult touching a hot plate. The baby watches as the adult recoils from the pain of touching it. The baby tries to touch the plate, finds that it is hot, and understands why the adult reacted the way he/she did. The baby has observed the situation, incorporated it, and now has the wisdom to not touch the plate again.

We can observe, we can "know", but we keep ourselves from transmuting what we know into wisdom.

Do we know that certain foods poison the body and lead to disease? Haven't we observed this again and again? Yet disease rates continue to climb- cancer, diabetes, obesity.

We observe that our school systems are not providing youth what they need. We observe teen violence and dropout rates. And we "know" that our media has shown more violence and stereotypes, and that we continue to pass on outdated traditions to our children- but we refuse to admit that their unhappiness is linked to us.

Do we observe our issues with money? We "know" that we buy impulsively, and we "know" that advertisers use psychological devises to get us to buy more. We know the patterns and results- and our debt continues to grow.

We can continue to "know" certain things, and observe how the world is- but when will we decide it is time to grow up and function on a level where we actually utilize what we observe?

We know this, too. We know that it only takes a small shift in action to stop our self-destructive tendencies. But nothing changes. We are fearful to make this shift because we continue to refuse to let ourselves have understanding. We are like infants who refuse to learn how to speak.

We lack understanding because in our preoccupation with what others are doing, we have forgotten to observe ourselves.