As far as I can determine, I have listened to three distinct voices throughout my life.
The first was others’ voices: my mother’s voice, my teachers’ voices, my peers’ voices, ecclesiastical leaders’ voices. In other words, I was attached to the outside voices of others.
At age 37, I began to hear an inner voice. It guided me through major risks I began to take. The voices of others fell off the table. The only voice that mattered was the inner voice or my second voice.
At somewhere around age 53 (maybe as late as 55), rational thinking took center stage. Outside voices were important, but little more than considered opinions. My inner voice guided me as I walked that tightrope between two cliffs. And then one day, my rational thinking seemed to come roaring in. I can remember the day I made the following promise to myself: square pegs in square holes; no more square pegs in round holes.
I hesitate to call it my rational mind, because it suggests that, like my inner voice, it is a separate voice residing in a different part of my brain. No. It is the whole of my brain.
I think this is my fully integrated brain: taking all that I have heard from others’ voices, contrasting that with all that I have heard from my inner voice, and integrating the two into my rational mind. It is for me the crowning work of a life well lived.
I trust my judgment. I am constantly weighing facts. I labor to narrow down ideas to their essence. I refuse to come to any conclusion unless I absolutely have to. Why? There are so very few fundamental truths, and to get close to one you have to dig them out with the gift of a rational mind, given freely to each and every one of us.
A rational mind is a powerful thing.