Thinking was forbidden when I was young. One believed and did what one was told. Optimal accomplishment was best of class. To “ask questions” – that is, questions without easy answers – was disruptive and impolite.

                  I blamed my parents for this blindness, but really it’s a sound approach. We keep our children from harm and what’s more harmful than doubt? Post “No Trespassing” signs around existential query and hope the prohibition holds. My parents, who’d now be in their hundreds, would have shuddered at my path, posing questions all the time. Who did I think I was! What would the neighbors say!

                  I might have kept cocooned if my dad hadn’t ripped down those No Trespassing signs with his deathbed recantation. He was furious to be dying at age 46 – who can blame him – but to be furious at God? To castigate God was blasphemy, heresy, and extremely impolite. It wasn’t done! If what Dad preached for my sixteen years wasn’t true, then what was? Whom, if anyone, could I trust?

                  I didn’t think these thoughts at first – I took comfort in compliance – but doubts niggled. I enjoyed poking past the posted prohibitions: it was naughty and fun. I confined my findings mostly to private pages – why upset apple carts? – but they mounted into an abundant pile of disbelief. Thinking became my recreation. Like an obnoxious tot, I kept asking why, why (but mum’s the word!).

                  Thinking led me to the conclusion that thinking’s of little worth. Yes, it’s a hoot, but to what end? Many who’ve played this game claim their pondering’s headed somewhere; they’re making progress. I foresee no satisfying enlightenment, no a-hah which in retrospect justifies my trek. Faith is the cessation of thinking, not its result. “I believe” means “to hell with doubt.”

                  I think for the same reason others play golf or collect stamps. They like to. Their absorption spares them the onus of emptiness. No feeling’s worse than a brain unemployed. Our natural curiosity may start nosing in repulsive corners. Twice, when my brain got unhorsed from its big idea, I tumbled into a depression. My stupid brain decided life wasn’t worth living. Happily, I ignored my brain’s suggestion.

                  My approaching exit encourages me to share my thoughts. I do this for my pleasure and, with any luck, yours, not because I think my thoughts worthwhile. One just hates to leave a party with so much unsaid. Schubert, age 29, groaned he couldn’t die with so many songs in him. I feel that way about thoughts.

                  The thrilling surprise of my latter years was I wasn’t alone. Others had thought thoughts like mine. I knew this from the writers I loved, but I thought my entire coterie was just me and them. Turns out, though we may not be legion, we are more than a few. I consider these pages a sort of clubhouse for folks who enjoy thinking. True, I do most of the talking, but can’t you feel each other’s presence?

                  When anyone shies from these pages, I am glad. Enjoyment is our purpose here and those not enjoying themselves should spend their time elsewhere. Even when our subject’s grim – and we are living in a grim epoch – our spirit’s companionable and, I hope, our words agreeable. The motto I stumbled onto was “Better together.”

                  I am grateful to my dad for ripping down those “No Trespassing” signs, though it hurt him to do it. The compliant path he foresaw for me would have been, at best, a bore, more likely a doom. Inadvertently he supplied me a vocation and widened my sky.